By Lewis Obi
“The moment the prerogative of violence slips away the hands of
government into an unknown body, there is no government into an unkown body,
there is no government … we have been challenged with Boko Haram for so long
and now it is (the) so called herdsmen…”
– Dr.Ahmadu Ali, former Education Minister, ex-PDP Chairman.
The unnerving part
of the current herdsmen blood lust is its regularity. It is impossible to open the pages of a newspaper without a
hair-raising report in one part of the country or another. When it is not about a man butchered to death in his farm in Delta State,
it is the night invasion by the herdsmen of a rural community in Benue State,
suddenly awakened from sleep by gunfire, then the pandemonium, the flight of
the villagers, and the burning of their homes. Overnight they have become homeless, in need of security, a
shelter and sustenance. These are exactly what rural folks dread. They don’t want to depend on charity; they work all the time and
are tied to the land.
