Tinubu’s Thomas Jefferson’s moment

FOR weeks now, I have been receiving scores of social media posts, purporting real-time moments Fulani herdsmen were laying livelihoods of farmers mostly in the North East, North Central, South West and South East in ruins. In this AI age, proofs beyond reasonable doubts, should be a sine qua non of conclusions on sensitive matters, which are basically rooted in electronic recordings. There is also the challenge of situating the time of the incidents: the difficulty of establishing whether they are old or recent recordings, though the period of happening, would not detract from the heartlessness the herdsmen demonstrated with relish. There have also been questions about whether the places of occurrence were in Nigeria as most of the reviewed posts could have been anywhere in Nigeria’s Saharan neighbours like Mali or Niger; also dense in Fulani population.

But among the lot is an indisputable viral documentary on a South West settlement named Araromi, showing leaf-waving protesting traumatised women, farming pregnant mothers and obviously uneducated young females, whose efforts at supporting their families and by extension, assisting in assuaging the nation’s hunger pangs, were completely ruined by herdsmen who not only fed the labouring women’s harvest to their cattle, but also subject the hapless mothers to regular attacks and bodily harms, right on their ancestral land! You need to listen to their agonies.

Like a bad dream, insecurity has relapsed under the Tinubu administration, with soldiers and their battalions being neutralised with impunity by supposedly untrained horrendous militia, operating either as ISWAP, remnant of Boko Haram or the marauders known as bandits, who flourish on kidnapping. At risk of sounding heartless, I would not really be bothered if those trained in the art of warfare can no longer handle assumed inexperienced gunmen. I remember when we were much younger in Ilesa, how disappointed parents, especially fathers would rather have their wards comprehensively beaten by asking them to stay back in a two-fighting they expected their own to win easily than quit. You will hear something like “if you can’t handle your mate, it is better he kills you there {in the fight}”. It is not savagery. It is disappointment rooted in mutilated pride. If military bases are now playgrounds for tattered outlaws, then let berets be laid jare.

In Lagos of old, there was a legendary thief called Anikura, whose targets were mainly cross-border traders. His infamy grew so much that an operational code was cast for him; Anikura won’t ask you not to trade, he won’t ask you not to make money, but he will ensure you do not take the money home.

In Judges 6:3, the Bible recalls the Midianites, Amalekites and other people of the East, attacking Israel whenever they planted their crops, with Verse 4 saying “They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys”. Verse 5 adds, “They came up with their livestock and tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it”, while Verse 6 says, “Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.” The answer to their prayer was Gideon.

Present-day Christians, particularly praying Pentecostals call those who under any guise, take planters’ harvests away as plunderers, wasters or spoilers, just like Anikura of Lagos, the Midianites and Amalekites of old and herdsmen of today. For Northern minorities and Southerners in Fulani chokehold, especially those who voted President Tinubu in 2023 when he was regionally rejected by the Fulani electorate, the buyer’s remorse is palpable. Yet, many Christian communities in the North, from interactions with their leaders, are not averse to re-electing him. Yes, many were frightened off his Muslim-Muslim ticket last time but began supporting him the moment he emerged, because they felt he would be their Gideon. Even now, they are still hopeful that somehow, their existence would be rescued from the Fulani, a race in total dominance of the core North, despite being allegedly the sixth in voting size and fourth in population size, in the North! According to the numbers made available to me by an illustrious Northerner whose name I can’t mention for obvious reasons, Aboriginal but completely dominated Hausa are listed as North’s numero uno in human size, followed by Bare bare {the Kanuri}, kith and kin of Vee-Pee Kashim Shettima who is now allegedly a passenger in the Tinubu administration, the Tivs of mostly Benue State, before the dominant Fulani who are even nomadic and allegedly hardly vote because they would be in the bush tendering their cattle and uprooting farmers’ harvest as animals’ feed.

On December 15, 1791 when America officially embraced the Second Amendment known as the gun right, it was to protect human freedom. For 234 years, they have preserved the right despite several challenges, especially of gun crimes and fatal shooting incidents. Between James Madison and George Washington, America has its hero of freedom and personal liberty. The ongoing constitutional amendment exercise is President Tinubu’s moment of history. Except the farmers and other Nigerians under the yoke of herdsmen are officially given the power to fight back, their persistent ordeals would progressively worsen. The guns are already in the wrong hands. Does it not make better sense to right all wrongs with just one bold policy?

Thomas Jefferson, the third American president, who led between 1801 and 1809 said of humanity “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights government are instituted among men”. He was completely sold on the Bill of Rights for all Americans to bear firearms.

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