By Lewis Obi
IN the last five years, Fulani herdsmen have murdered at least 8,000
Nigerians in various parts of the country often in the pretext of protecting
their cows or resisting unarmed local farmers protesting the destruction of
their crops. The cases involving murders, the destruction and burning of
villages and towns are the ones that occasionally make news. Numerous incidents
of trampling on crops, rape of innocent women in their farms, assault and
battery of men caught in their farms who express disapproval of the destruction
of their crops – those provocations make no news and are never recorded.
In many parts of Nigeria
today, it is taken for granted that Fulani herdsmen would trample on crops and
the farmer has to bear the sight without as much as demur.
If he raises an alarm, that means the end of his life. If he runs
to alert the village, the village is burned to the ground. If the whole town is
aroused, that is the end of the town. It would be destroyed and the townsfolk
turned into refugees somewhere. Reports are made to the police, numerous
reports, yet not one prosecution has been reported, to say nothing about a
conviction and sentence. It is for this reason that the Fulani herdsmen have
assumed the status of the imperial agent, he can do no wrong. Everyone’s life
is expendable, the property of farmers is worth less or nothing and of no
consideration.
That has been the situation in much of Southern
Nigeria and some parts of the Middle Belt. The Ugwuneshi incident
in Awgu Local Government Area of Enugu State made news last week because of a
little twist which came in the form of the military’s direct intervention. The
herdsmen, as usual, trampled on the crops and occupied the farms of the
Ugwuneshi villagers on the 17th March. The farmers gathered to talk about what
to do next and some of them had a shouting match with the herdsmen. Before the
farmers could decide on the next step, if there would be any next step, a
convoy of military vehicles had surrounded the villagers who were then bundled
into army trucks like sacks of potatoes. To the acclaim of the herdsmen, the
military rounded up all the men and drove them to the Umuahia Police Division
with the instruction that they should be locked up in the prison cells. In Nigeria , the
military’s word is still practically the law, and, so, the 76 men of Ugwuneshi
were incarcerated. The farmers had not attacked the herdsmen. They had been in
a peaceful assembly, trying to figure out what to do about the literal seizure
of their land and the destruction of their property.