Herdsmen Of Terror

By Lewis Obi  

On 2nd October 2015, I offered it as my opinion on this page that the provocative activities of Fulani herdsmen are likely to lead to war which “when it begins, will be like all wars – senseless, destructive and lamentable. No one knows when and where it will begin, but it will begin as a convulsive reprisal for a massacre by Fulani herdsmen, a phenomenon that has now assumed all but a common occur­rence in Nigeria.’

“The scale and frequency of massa­cres by Fulani herdsmen without a single prosecution is the clearest evidence of what is known as impunity, and impunity is the reason the coming war is inescap­able.”

That was before the herdsmen had kid­napped and murdered the traditional rul­er of Ubulu-Ukwu in Delta State. That was before the herdsmen conducted their full-scale terrorist invasion of Agatu land in Benue State practically paralyzing and occupying eight local governments in the state and killing at least 500 per­sons and burning scores of towns and villages. That was before the Ugwuneshi incident in Enugu State where a dis­tressed community being harassed by the herdsmen was gathering to discuss its predicament. Suddenly Nigerian Army trucks arrived and, as the herdsmen cheered, the army bun­dled 76 men into their trucks and on to the Umuahia Prison. Enugu State Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi then went to Umuahia, trying to secure the freedom of the humiliated men, and dropped a tear or two. But that was just the beginning of his anguish. In Ugwuneshi he was dealing with 76 men unjustly imprisoned. He broke down last week when he had to see recovered dead bodies of men slaugh­tered by the same Fulani herdsmen at Ukpabi Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani.

The rampaging herdsmen had at­tacked and burned seven villages – Nimbo Ngwoko, Ugwuijoro, Ekwuru, Ebor, Enugu Nimbo, Umuome, and Ugwuachara.

The most frightening part of the attack on Nimbo was the high level discipline and military precision of its execution. The Enugu State Govern­ment had been informed of the im­pending attack and the governor had promptly convened the state’s secu­rity council meeting which included every arm of the security agencies – the Enugu Garrison Command 82nd Division of the Nigerian Army, the Commissioner of Police, the Depart­ment of |State Security, and Prison officials. Each arm assured the gov­ernor that it would do everything to pre-empt the attack. The herdsmen apparently operate at a much higher level and, so, the best laid plans of the governor and the state’s security agencies were thwarted by Fulani herdsmen. That sense of impotence and helplessness necessitated the gover­nor’s recourse to and the re-mobilization of the state’s indigenous neighborhood watch. With the unanimous approval of the traditional rulers and the association of town unions, Governor Ugwuanyi had to cough out N100 million to begin the process of activating the vigilante net­work.

The scariest part of the Nimbo disaster was the reaction of the 19 governors of Northern Nigeria who flat out denied the fact known to all that Fulani herdsmen had conducted the massacre. Indeed, in a show of righteous indignation, they warned Nigerians to stop ‘insulting’ Fu­lani herdsmen.

The governors thus set the country up for an encore of the civil war on two grounds. First, the governors implied that the depredations of the Fulani herds­men will continue and that the governors have no apologies for the Genghis Khan style destruction and mass murder the Fulani herdsmen have perpetrated in the last five years. Secondly, it sounded all too familiar to students of Nigerian his­tory who would remember that the same way the governors denied the atrocities of the herdsmen last week was the same way the Northern military government denied the pogroms against Eastern­ers in May 1966 and beyond. Indeed as thousands of Igbos were being massa­cred all over Northern cities and towns, the Northern government and its media trivialized the horrors and described them as mere “disturbances.”

The callous statement of the Northern governors put the tragedy in a new di­mension forcing the Afenifere, the Yo­ruba socio-cultural group, to go down memory lane to recall the atrocities of the Fulani herdsmen: “For some people to gather and call themselves northern governors, and have no sympathy for lives than to be defending the Fulani herdsmen, shows clearly that it is a trage­dy of monumental proportion to be in the same country with these elements.” Femi Fani-Kayode in a ringing denunciation earlier in the week called on the northern governors to “purge themselves of the unwholesome and denigrating contempt that they clearly have for the people of the South before it is too late and before the whole damn nation explodes and breaks into a thousand pieces.”

The Nimbo attack confirmed the un­spoken fears of many Nigerians of the existence of a well-armed, well-trained, army-supported, militia sponsored by the cattle breeders. It went a long way to explain the brazen impunity, the fact that having killed hundreds of innocent de­fenseless farmers, not a single herdsman has been arrested, much less prosecuted to say nothing of being punished.

Since 7th March 2010 when it was first reported that Fulani herdsmen killed over 500 people in Jos, Plateau State, to 14th May 2013 when the BBC reported that the herdsmen killed 53 in North Central Nigeria, verifiable records were kept, and Fulani herdsmen, sponsored by the cattle breeders, have committed enough heinous crimes to deserve a court date at the International Criminal Court. On 8th July2013, the Fulani herdsmen killed 34 people in Benue State. On 26th No­vember 2013 Jihadwatch reported that “Islamic Extremists killed at least 71 Christians in Nigeria…assailants were believed to be Muslim Fulani herdsmen.” On 24th March 2014 Fulani herdsmen killed 36 people in Agatu area, Benue State. A week later the herdsmen sacked and burned 33 villages, killing at least 19 people in the area.

On 7th May 2014, Fulani herdsmen killed 25 people and burned six villages in Benue State. Later that week Fulani herdsmen at­tacked and killed 25 additional people at the Guma Local Government Area also in Benue State. A month earlier, Human Rights Watch reported on 15th April 2014 that hundreds had been killed in the North Central Region of Nigeria since December 2013.

On 11th February 2015 Fulani Herdsmen killed 30 more persons in Benue State and on 11th March, the herdsmen did not spare the palace of the Tor Tiv as they killed 11 more in Tiv land. They killed 90 more on 16th March 2015 in another Benue village and on the 12th April 2015 Fulani herdsmen killed 12 more persons, including children in Benue State. On 26th May 2015 more than 23 more people were killed also in Benue State. Indeed on 15th August 2015, the Benuenews.com.ng, an internet blog, reported that between Janu­ary and July 2015, 761 persons have lost their lives to Fulani herdsmen in Benue State.

The above incidents are compressed from published indisputable reports. They oc­curred before September 2015when the herdsmen grabbed a big fish in the person of Chief Olu Falae, 77, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, a former presidential candidate of a major political party, an acknowledged leader of the Yoruba people. He had troubles with the herdsmen in the past. This time they actually kidnapped him, and held him in ransom, mistreated him for nearly six days and forced the chief’s relatives to pay them N5 million for his freedom. The Fu­lani herdsmen returned two months ago to Chief Falae’s farm, this time they killed his security man.

In all this except the two men who are awaiting trial for the kidnap of Chief Fa­lae, not one Fulani herdsman has been arrested till date, which is why President Buhari’s statements on the herdsmen have elicited nothing but laughter and cyni­cism. After the Nimbo massacre by the herdsmen, an unusually amateurish state­ment was purportedly issued by Presi­dential spokesman Garba Shehu which said among other things that: “Ending the recent upsurge of attacks on communi­ties by herdsmen reportedly armed with sophisticated weapons is now a priority on the Buhari administration’s agenda for enhanced national security and the Armed Forces and Police have clear in­structions to take all necessary action to stop the carnage.” It was a belated effort to pretend to react to the herdsmen terror after nearly one year in which the Presi­dent had played the ‘see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing’ card.

The Ugwuneshi community is still traumatized by its encounter with the herdsmen. The villagers told a visiting Defence Headquarters committee that “they (Fulani herdsmen) have driven us away from our farms; they have also killed our men. We can no longer go to the farm alone; we must go in groups for fear of the Fulani herdsmen. They can never allow you to go and uproot your crop.”

“They have killed Clement Alabiri; they killed him, put him in a bag and dropped him on the road. They have also killed Elisus Ujah, Sunday Okibe and Simon Nwaukwu. Just recently they kidnapped two of our women, Ukaji Nwafor and Maria Nwoke…”

The Association of Nsukka Professors took out a page in a newspaper this week to explain that “There have been incessant killings by Fulani herdsmen in Nimbo, Uzo- Uwani LGA, Enugu State. For instance, in 2013 two JSS2 students attending their par­ents’ farms were murdered in cold blood by herdsmen in Nimbo while attempting to pre­vent cattle from mauling their parents’ farms. In 2014, a retired head-teacher and another farmer were killed in Nimbo by Fulani cattle herders while seeking to protect their farms from being destroyed by cattle. In addition to these, innumerable women and girls have been raped, molested and otherwise abused by Fulani cattle herders…ANP strongly con­demns the premeditated and carefully cho­reographed invasion and mindless massacre of over 46 men, women and children in their sleep in Nimbo on 25th April 2016 by Fulani herdsmen.”

“Nomadic pastoralism is archaic, unpro­ductive and unsustainable in the 21st cen­tury. Ranching is the way forward and we recommend that the billions invested in arming Fulani Herdsmen with assault and military grade weapons should instead be invested in establishment of ranches. …it is confounding that what we now receive from the Fulani herdsmen whom we have hitherto hosted and lived peacefully with in our land is daily provocation, abuse, and rape of our women and slaughter of defenseless village men, women and children for daring to raise their voice against the destruction of their crops by cattle.”

It has become clear that the cattle breed­ers have set up a well-funded, well-armed, superbly-trained commando strike force in ad­dition to a logistics network to supply assault weapons in the field when needed. The breed­ers include some of the richest and most pow­erful Nigerians, including retired generals, which explains easy availability of weapons to the herdsmen. The Secretary-General of the Nimbo Undergraduates and Graduates As­sociation, Mr. Godwin Ogbobe, recalled that he got wind of the attack from a caller from Nasarawa State where “the Fulanis on Friday (22nd April) afternoon were boasting when they were about leaving for Enugu State, how they will deal with us.”

“I made call desperately and the governor of Enugu dispatched security men immedi­ately. A combined of the military and police mounted roadblock at Obolo Afor for thorough stop and search. Some patrol vehicles were dispatched to my town. For reasons I cannot explain, early morning of Monday by 4 a.m. the Divisional Police Officer in my local gov­ernment recalled the mobile police men patrol­ling the community and not up to 30 minutes later the herdsmen attacked. They entered from Kogi State through the bush.”

In corroboration, the Kogi State Police com­mand is said to have stumbled into a suspect who participated in the Enugu massacre and the police only found out when they viewed what was described “a gory video of the Enugu massacre in his phone.” He was said to have confirmed that more than “100 of them were invited from several parts of the country to perpetrate the act.”

Worldwide Fulani herdsmen are now ranked just two slots behind Boko Haram as the fourth most blood-thirsty terrorist organization in the world. It is too late for Northern Governors to spin the atrocities, to deny the obvious, and trivialize the affliction and the tragedies. Luckily this is the electronic age and as long as cell phones exist the deniability of atrocities is no longer available to cruel men and dictators.

*Mr. Obi, veteran journalist, could be reached with lewisobi66@gmail.com