By
Ochereome Nnanna
ON Wednesday last week, I was at the Enugu State
High Court to attend a session. Shortly before 10am, a large number of
prisoners, accompanied by their wardens, arrived.
President Buhari The
prisoners’ warden who came to our own courtroom with his wards stood with us in
the corridor as the court was packed with lawyers, plaintiffs, respondents,
court staff and other interested persons. After a while, a discussion naturally
came up about the menace of Fulani cattle herders all over the country.
The prison warden who obviously hailed fromEnugu State opened up and said the situation in
the state was “horrible”. “I
went to my hometown last weekend. I was just resting in my room in the
afternoon when, all of a sudden I started hearing ‘hm-hm-hm’. I looked out of
my window into my garden. I was shocked at what I saw: cows everywhere! They
were eating everything in the garden. I came out and saw three young Fulani
men. They were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, the type that we in the Service
never have the opportunity to touch. The boys just looked at me and continued
to mind their cows. There was nothing I could do because I knew they were ready
to shoot at any slightest opportunity”.
The prison warden who obviously hailed from
Barely five days
later on Monday, 25th April, there was breaking news all over the Internet on
an outbreak of fighting between Fulani herdsmen and indigenes in Nimbo, Uzo
Uwani Local Government Area, a northern precinct of Enugu State .
According to the news which was later confirmed, seven villages in Nimbo (Nimbo
Ngwoko, Ugwuijoro, Ekwuru, Ebor, Enugu Nimbo, Umuome, and Ugwuachara) were
attacked by the herdsmen, leaving between 40 and 48 people dead (many with
their throats slit, Boko Haram style) and over 60 injured.
Residential homes
and a church were razed. Indigenes of the community fled to nearby Nsukka town.
Can I hear you say: “Agatu
Season 2” ?
Come to think of it: Agatu is not far from Uzo Uwani. Benue and Enugu share a common boundary. It would seem
that, having “conquered” Agatu, the Fulani militia deployed to take over the
South East. News had it that days to the attack, there were rumours that 500
heavily-armed Fulani militiamen were camped in the bushes ready to attack. The
Directorate of State Service (DSS) under Director General, Alhaji Lawal Daura,
did nothing about it. DSS could not re-enact the speed and expedition with
which they allegedly discovered fifty corpses in shallow graves in Abia State,
five of which they identified as being those of people of Fulani stock, though
they did not tell us the ethnic background of the rest forty five dead men.
It was not
until these vandals had despatched innocent and defenceless villagers to their
early graves that we got reports of police and military deployment to the area.
Perhaps, they were there to shut the stable door after the horse had escaped.
That is the type of “law enforcement” the security agencies of this country are
very good at providing. Before now, people were asking who these “herdsmen”
really were. For me, it is not just who they are that matters the most, as that
is now obvious. What interests me more is: what really is their mission?