Herdsmen Menace: Action And Reaction In Ekiti

By Amanze Obi

Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State has taken the bull by the horns. Some three months ago, I had cause in this column to commend him for standing up to be counted among men. The governor had then charged at the Fulani herdsmen, who murdered two indigenes of Ekiti State on Ekiti soil in the name of grazing. For Fayose, that brigandage and effrontery from the herdsmen was unacceptable. In a momentary fit of anger, the governor announced that cattle grazing had been banned in Ekiti State.

*Gov Ayo Fayose

However, after the initial outburst, Fayose retreated into his shell. Three months after, he has resurfaced with something more enduring; something that carries the force of law. The state House of Assembly has passed a bill regulating cattle grazing in the state. The bill, which was signed into law a few days ago by Governor Fayose, seeks to check the excesses and criminality of Fulani herdsmen, who have become the latest monster in Nigeria.

Under the grazing law, any herdsman caught with arms while grazing will be charged with terrorism. The law has also ruled out indiscriminate and uncontrolled grazing. Government has allocated certain portions of land to the local government councils for grazing activities. The time allowed for grazing is 7am to 6pm daily. Anybody found grazing on portions of land not allocated by government for such activity will be made to face the wrath of the law. There are other provisions of the law all of which seek to ensure that grazing is devoid of any form of criminality.

I commend the Fayose example. It is practical governance in action. It mirrors Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, which teaches that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In pure physics, it means that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. If we wean this Newtonian postulation of its scientific barbs, we will be left with an interventionist policy action that interprets and defines our situation.

Today in Nigeria, we are faced with a situation where everybody is scared stiff of a lethal object called AK47. Everybody is complaining that the Fulani herdsmen are wielding this weapon indiscriminately. But nobody has stopped to ask questions about how they acquire them. Why and how does the Fulani herdsman have free and unfettered access to sophisticated weapons of war? Many suspect that the herdsman is armed by the many retired military officers of northern extraction, who own the cows that he roams about with. If this is the case, we also need to ask questions about how the retired officers acquire the guns. In a situation where the Nigeria Police does not have sufficient guns to operate with, it beats the imagination that herdsmen can boast of large cache of arms that battalions of soldiers cannot boast of. This is strange, indeed.

The fact that nobody is after the herdsman and his criminality rankles the more. Why is he such a sacred cow? Why have the camps and hideouts of the herdsmen not been invaded by security agencies with a view to making arrests and dispossessing them of the dangerous weapons they wield?  This question is reinforced by the fact that we are all living witnesses to the intolerance of our security forces. They do not tolerate the unarmed Biafran agitator. He is killed freely for stepping out in the streets to protest. What about the Niger Delta agitator? He is the implacable enemy of the state.  He must be mowed down by the security agents wherever he is found.