Killings: Blame Buhari Not Service Chiefs!

By Richard Maduku

Despite a presidential appointee’s numerous enviable privileges, there are persons who don’t wish to become one today under President Muhammadu Buhari. A few even pity his aides. This is not because contractors will not build houses or buy cars for them because of the anti-corruption stance of the man. It is also not because they detest being referred to as usurpers, hyenas or jackals by the first lady whose outspokenness could sometimes be more critical of the government than that of a spokesperson of the rival political party. Neither are those who feel this way nursing presidential ambition come 2019 general elections. Rather it is because of the shortcomings of the government for which, whether out of fear or reverence for the President, the aides are always being blamed. 

For instance, the exasperating ineptitude if not sleaze that plagues the Ministry of Petroleum Resources which the President has appropriated for himself despite his enormous responsibilities are never attributed to him. It is the Junior Minister and the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company that always take the flak for everything including the frequent scarcity of petrol all over the country especially at Christmas/New year periods.

Why President Buhari Doesn’t Mourn The Dead

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Even without Samuel Ortom shedding tears, history is bound to credit him with a stellar role during the trying time of his people. He could have reached a pact with the devil and secured his cocoon of ease, unperturbed by the howls of his people being slaughtered by Fulani herdsmen.

*President Buhari 

 A peril of his sense of filial obligation to his people has been his humiliation at the hands of his colleagues. In their midst, he is burdened with a pariah status. One of them, Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong, might have given expression to what they were inhibited by political correctness from letting out . In a moment Lalong was overwhelmed with a sense of vindication of his prescience, he reminded Ortom that he warned him against making a law to stop Fulani herdsmen from destroying the people of Benue and their means of livelihood. Yes, Lalong attempted to recant, but this did not vitiate his stand.

Nigeria: Restructuring And The Herdsmen Question

By Adetokunbo Pearse

Reform in the fiscal and the security sectors can aid the effort to alleviate the growing tension between nomadic herdsmen and sedentary farmers which has captured national consciousness lately. Unfortunately these clashes are fast becoming a way of life in Nigeria. 

In 2017 alone deadly confrontation between roving herdsman and local communities were reported in every geopolitical zone except the north-west. Sometimes it is the herdsmen who get the worst of it as in the celebrated case in 2000 when then General Muhammadu Buhari led a delegation to governor Lam Adesina to protest the killing of dozens of Fulani herdsmen in Oyo State. At other times it is the local communities who suffer as in the most recent incident of January 1, 2018 with the massacre of some 70 citizens of Guma and Logo local government areas of Benue State by herdsmen or their agents.

President Buhari And The Herdsmen’s Endgame

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Of the many traumatic marvels of the President Muhammadu Buhari government, its predilection for crashing deeper into the abyss when we thought that we would no longer be jolted by its blunders, is striking. If his linkage to marauding and bloodthirsty Fulani herdsmen were only a staple of blackmail sustained by his traducers, he has just stoked the suspicion of his fidelity to their ghoulish vision with his response to the killings in Benue State.

*President Buhari 

Buhari did not bother to visit Benue for a first-hand apprehension of the tragedies that the Fulani herdsmen inflicted on the people. Nor was he seen to have expressed deep regret over the killings, except the platitudes that were regurgitated by his aides after a grudging approval from him. Or is this not a true measure of his lack of humanity and a perverted sense of justice and patriotism that while the nation was gripped by grief, Buhari and the governors from his northern region were preoccupied with his re-election in 2019?