Fulani Herdsmen: Fayose Bells The Cat

By Bola Bolawole

Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has trod where angels would fear to tread: he has banned the medieval practice of grazing cattle all over the place in the state. He has promised to send draft legislation to this effect to the state House of Assembly to be passed into law. When this is done, both cattle and herdsmen caught on the wrong side of the law will be sanctioned. The beasts will be confiscated while the herdsmen will cool their heels in goal.

*Gov Ayodele Fayose 

Not only is the practice of itinerant rearing of cattle archaic, it also negates the giant strides that Mankind has made from the Stone Age. Grazing cattle in an unruly and unorganised manner over farmlands, destroying the means of livelihood of law-abiding citizens and trampling their inalienable rights is an affront to the legal order and an unwarranted assault on those at the receiving end of the bestiality of both beast and herdsman.

All over the country are strident cries against the callousness of the herdsmen who not only feed their cattle on, and as a result destroy, farmlands, thereby complicating the problem of skyrocketing prices of foodstuffs in the land; they also main, rape, and kill innocent indigenes of the communities they traduce to the bargain. They kidnap and torture, they demand and collect ransoms before releasing their victims. Most times, the victims still get killed even after ransoms have been paid.

Cattles have been known to cause fatal accidents on the highways. The increasing wave of armed robbery attacks in many of the rural communities has also been traced to herdsmen who wield AK-47 in broad daylight in flagrant violation of the laws of the land, which frown at the proliferation of small arms. The authorities look the other way while these atrocities are perpetrated across the country.

The latest bus stop of the audacious bestiality of the herdsmen was Ekiti State, at a community called Oke-Ako in Ikole Local Government. Not less than two residents lost their lives instantly while scores of others suffered varying degrees of injuries and the community as a whole was sacked. Reports said it was a reprisal or vengeance mission by the herdsmen, in that earlier; the community had repelled a similar attack and got some of the assailants arrested by law-enforcement agents; even though they were reportedly left to go scot-free soon after.

As if they expected the community to simply fold its arms and do nothing, the herdsmen returned penultimate week to teach the Oke-Ako people “a lesson”. The community got wind of it and alerted the security agencies but for reasons, which bother on complicity, duplicity, and dereliction of duty, the appropriate authorities failed to act.

Nigerian Economy: Has Buhari Lost Grip?

By Bola Bolawole 

The advice by Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, that President Muhammadu Buhari summon an emergency meeting on the economy appears on the surface innocuous but deep down, it is fully loaded and ominous.

*Buhari 

On a visit to the Dr. Josef Goebbels of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Soyinka called for an emergency conference on the economy to which people outside government circles will also be invited, such as consumers, producers, Labour unions, experts on the economy, University egg-heads, among others.

Note Soyinka’s exact words: “I think we really need an emergency economic conference, a rescue operation bringing as many heads as possible together to plot the way forward.” We must also note that the Nobel Laureate, being not just a man of letters but also one with an internationally-acclaimed mastery of the English Language, gingerly and delectably picks his words. He means the words that he uses; no idle or wasteful word is allowed.

So, look at the words he chose to employ in just that sentence: “I think we really need…” meaning that it was a carefully thought-out process that brought out his advice; he was not whimsical about it. He did not just wake up from the wrong side of his bed to begin to rant; the advice was his considered opinion.