By Rotimi Fasan
There was in this
past weekend at least one reported incident of a ghastly nature between Fulani
herdsmen and hunters. This happened in Koh village in Adamawa State. Five
lives including that of one hunter and five herdsmen were lost in that
encounter. This would be the latest in a long series of bloody encounters
between cattle herders who have since replaced their prodding staff and
concealed daggers with the more modern and effective assault rifle.
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While clashes
between farmers and herdsmen have a long history in different parts of the
north, there has been an exponential increase in such clashes in different
parts of the country, mostly outside the north, in the last one and half years.
As always in these recent cases the herdsmen have been the main aggressors for
the simple reason that they’ve been responsible for leading their animals into
other peoples’ properties, practically turning such persons’ means of livelihood
into grazing fields. But like the herdsmen, farmers are in their line of
business to make money. Beyond leading their cattle into farmlands herdsmen or
people who pretend to tend cattle have been known to engage in wanton acts of
criminality.
They are involved in
armed robbery, raping and abduction of women and children in isolated
communities. But the one aspect of the activities of these herdsmen that have
been most controversial is their readiness to place their rights as diary
farmers over and above the rights of food and cash crop farmers. For them,
their activities seem to say, their cattle is worth more than human life to say
nothing of anybody’s farm. They would kill at the least provocation just in
order to assert their right to graze their cattle. And with assault rifles now
part of their paraphernalia of business, their criminal tendencies go unchecked.
They’ve decimated
families and sacked villages from places as far-flung apart as Benue and
Adamawa to Ekiti. From Oyo, Plateau, Enugu to Ebonyi, it’s been a harvest of
deaths and destruction. Yet, the response from the authorities has been one of
accommodation if not outright appeasement. Rather than taking a firm hold of
the issue and tackling it headlong, state and federal authorities have tended
to be weak-kneed in terms of what they ought to do. But this ought not to be
so. The number of lives that have been lost to clashes between herdsmen and
farmers or members of other communities ought to make our civil authorities
ashamed. They’ve practically abdicated their responsibilities as Nigerians saw
recently with the Agatu and Nimbo massacres. People are now contemplating self
help in the face of the irresponsible abdication by municipal, state and
federal authorities.
