El-Rufai And The Genocide In Southern Kaduna

By Moses Ochonu

I don't envy my brother, Samuel Aruwan, his job as Press Secretary to Governor Nasir el-Rufai. It is becoming increasingly impossible to defend and rationalize the tyranny and erratic dictatorial tendencies of the governor. As governor, he seems to think that the state he governs is his private estate to control and dominate, and that he is beyond reproach.

*President Buhari and Nasir el-Rufai

And now, it is safe to say we can add the crime of insensitivity and incompetence to the governor's list of infractions. I couldn't believe the headline when I saw it: "How I Paid Fulani Herdsmen to Stop Kaduna Killings—El-Rufai." Alas, there is absolutely nothing factually incorrect about the headline, only a little sensationalism, which is what newspaper headlines do. To counter the Vanguard story, Samuel Aruwan has released the complete transcript of Governor el-Rufai's chat with select journalists. The part of the transcript dealing with the ongoing massacres in Southern Kaduna proves that the Vanguard report, which copiously quotes the governor's own words verbatim, faithfully reflects what the governor said. The quotes are completely accurate. You can question the obvious sensationalism of the headline, but el-Rufai practically cast that headline for them with his words. So here is what the governor scandalously confessed to:

1. The governor said Fulani herders from Niger, Cameroon, Chad, and other neighboring West African countries are responsible for the massacres, which he claims are revenge for the loss of their cattle and kinsmen during the 2011 post election crisis.

Perhaps this is true. Perhaps he is merely trying to externalize the problem. It is always very convenient to blame foreigners. Even Buhari did the same when Agatu happened. What el-Rufai does not realize is that blaming foreign Fulani herdsmen is self-indicting. It also indicts our security services and the administration of President Buhari. For how is it that these Fulani from neighboring countries are able to breach our borders at will while fully armed and make their way deep into the Southern Kaduna hinterlands, murder women and children, burn down whole communities, and melt away unchallenged to visit the same genocidal treatment on another community? At the very least, it indicates that we've totally lost control of our northern borders. The way the governor said it indicates that he doesn't see this breach of our borders by armed herdsmen as a problem. Rather, for reasons known only to him, he sees it as a normal seasonal migration by herdsmen. Does our border not mean anything?

Before The Umpteenth 'Herdsmen' Attack

By Emmanuel Ugwu

If a perceptive artist was commissioned to draw a portrait of President Muhammadu Buhari, he would have to think of how to present an image of a conflicted, two-faced commander in chief. Buhari is a hawk and a dove. A lion and a lamb. A war monger and a pacifist.

He is waging wars against cattle rustlers and Niger Delta militants while winking at the prolific mass murderers that parade as ‘herdsmen’. He is fighting to secure Nigerian cattle and oil facilities even as he literally feigns ignorance of a genocidal phenomenon claiming countless Nigerian lives.

The double standard is not as a result of an oversight. Buhari receives daily security briefings. He is constantly updated on the condition of safety of lives and property in Nigeria. He is furnished with processed data on past and present security threats and predictive intelligence on future scenarios. His rich knowledge of the security situation of Nigeria is critical to his ability to fulfill the fundamentals of his job description as the president of the republic.

So, why is Buhari treating the wastage of Nigerians by the ‘herdsmen’ with asymmetric indifference? Why does he condone the killing of Nigerians when he is raging against cattle rustling and pipeline vandalism? Aren’t human lives incomparable, in value, with cattle or crude oil? Shouldn't the protection of endangered human beings come before that of animals and oil?

This question is important because Buhari and his generals categorize every serious security challenge as a battle and create a special military operation to defeat it. They dedicate a new operation to any pattern of criminal behavior that they consider too dangerous to be allowed to wane on its own timetable.

This inclination to resort to military operation is the reflex of a Buhari presidency that feels it is under obligation to use any effective means to de-escalate any spiral of criminality before its perpetrators develop a false sense of invincibility.

Constitutional purists take exception to this new normal of deploying the military to undertake law enforcement assignments that fall under the purview of the Nigerian police. The idealists say that repurposing the military as a quick fix talisman for suppressing domestic crimes is essentially unlawful and potentially risky. They argue that fitting the military into the vacuum of weakness of the Nigerian police, in the long run, could have the effect of orienting the focus of the Nigerian military away from their core mission. They surmise that the perennial distraction of the Nigerian military with police duties may be eroding the professionalism of our armed forces, and therefore, vitiating the readiness of the Nigerian military to defend the country against external aggression.

The Nigerian Army is presently prosecuting two military operations to combat violent crimes that the Buhari administration deems to be beyond the capacity of the Nigerian police to confront. Operation ‘Harbin Kunama’ is addressing the menace of cattle rustling in some parts of the North. Operation ‘Crocodile Smile’ is battling the sabotage of oil installations by militants in the Niger Delta region. But there is no hurricane-name-sounding, operation-scale military response to the runaway terrorism of the ‘herdsmen’.

In July, Buhari flew to Zamfara State to launch Operation Harbin Kunama. Prior to that time, a part of Zamfara state, particularly Dansadau forest, had become the playground of cattle rustlers. Armed gangs resident in that bush were invading villages from and impoverishing people whose wealth is mainly denominated in cattle.

Buhari went to the forest dressed in military uniform. His physical presence and his appearance in combat gear were a message. He wanted to signal that he took the suffering of the victims of cattle rustling seriously, and that he was committed to doing everything within his powers to end the scourge.

At the occasion, Buhari spoke to the heart of the matter. He said that his government viewed cattle rustling as a crime. He warned, in the clearest terms, that the mandate of the operation he came to kickstart was to achieve a complete wipeout of cattle rustlers troubling the people of Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi and Niger states.