Fulani Herdsmen: A Strain On One Nigeria

 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.