By Louis Odion, FNGE
With the Boko Haram cauldron still smoldering in a corner, it does appearNigeria
is already choking on a much quicker poison: the cocktail of beef and bullet.
Or, how else can one describe the apparition of a trigger-happy herdsman now at
the national door.
The weapon his forebears carried never used to be more than a stick, to whip the herd into line. And maybe a dagger tucked in a scabbard, to scare potential marauder in the jungle. But the new cattle-rearer has added gleaming AK-47 to his cache.
With the Boko Haram cauldron still smoldering in a corner, it does appear
The weapon his forebears carried never used to be more than a stick, to whip the herd into line. And maybe a dagger tucked in a scabbard, to scare potential marauder in the jungle. But the new cattle-rearer has added gleaming AK-47 to his cache.
The fact
that he is migrant makes his own franchise of terror more diffuse, more
intimate in savagery. As he wanders day and night from his native dry land up
north to greener pasture down south, he has scant regard for the territorial
integrity of farm camps he finds on his way.
From the north-central down to communities across the entire south, the siege is complete. The rampaging Ak-47-wielding herdsman leaves a trail of plunder, rape, kidnap and bloodbath. The kind you find in a Grade-A horror movie. Consider a slew of reports in just the past few days. On Wednesday, the Taraba State Government confirmed no fewer than 40 persons were slaughtered allegedly by Fulani herdsmen (
Tuesday came a rather grotesque report from
Ivwurie shared his experience: "I had embarked on a preventive approach to this matter which is identifying the source and taking the battle to the enemy in their domain." (However, the lawmaker was silent on what becomes of the cows: booties or prisoners of war?)
On Monday, in
*Louis Odion |
A day
earlier in Akure, a security guard at a farm settlement owned by a Yoruba
leader, Olu Falae, was brutally murdered by suspected herdsmen as usual. This
came when some other herdsmen are still standing trial for allegedly kidnapping
and torturing the same Falae for several days in September last year.
Abia and Imo entered the radar last weekend following a statement by the Department of State Security that five Fulani herdsmen were killed in a forest along the border of the two states. They were allegedly buried in a shallow grave. Condemning the action at a joint press conference Monday, governors of the two states blamed it on "miscreants".
Few weeks earlier in
Embarrassed by the reports, the Army high command later described the perpetrators as "fake soldiers". The puzzle then: how did they acquire military uniforms, officially issued FN 7.62mm military rifles and green-colour military trucks deployed in the "invasion"? So bold, the "fake soldiers" also had the temerity to head straight to the police command to hand over their 76 captives for proper custody!
It eventually took a court pronouncement in Abia before the Agwu 76 were set free after wallowing in detention for days.
However, the Abia/Imo killings are a child's play compared to the genocide perpetrated in the last two months by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Benue communities like Agatu, Buruku, Guma, Gwer-west, Logo, Kwande, Gwer- East and Katsina- Ala. At the last count, more than 1,500 had been butchered so far this year. On a single day in February alone, about 300 were murdered in Okokolo, Akwu, Ugboka and Aila villages (all in Agatu LGA). Entire villages were razed. On March 19, another 500 were butchered in 10 communities of the same LGA.
Clearly, the nation is now under a siege of sorts. This writer has a personal experience to share. Two or three year ago in Benin, we woke up at my private home to find that the flower garden outside which had taken a fortune to plant and pains and years to cultivate had been completely destroyed by some cows that stomped past overnight. But should everyone resort to the Ethiope formula, there certainly would be no nation again.
Moving forward, I believe a more sustainable panacea to this festering crisis is to first recognize and appreciate the cultural issues involved. Beside immediate economic benefits, farming communities have emotional attachment to their land considered ancestral legacy. Just the same way the Fulani herdsman views his herd as his only store of value and the national landscape as his legitimate pasture. Lasting resolution lies in both parties understanding each other and the boundaries clearly demarcated.
Therefore, what is required at this hour is a leadership that is not only creative but also courageous. President Buhari's dilemma is understandable. Before the last election, the charter of demand by the Fulani included a request for the grazing reserves to hold and nourish their cattle and other animals. But the challenge of statesmanship is to pursue a course of action that also accommodates the interests of others.
To start with, the specter of the herdsman brandishing at all an unlicensed rifle - much less a weapon of mass destruction like AK-47 - constitutes clear and grave assault on public decency. Rushing to deploy such lethal weaponry without inhibition in otherwise civil dispute over right of way on farmland is, to say the least, taking the culture of impunity to a treasonable bend.
Now is the time for President Buhari, himself a cattle farmer, to go beyond the normal call of duty to stave the dangerously growing perception that seeming official lethargy - if not indifference - to the continued killings is dictated by the spirit of kinship he shares with the rampaging herdsman or that the nomad's renewed audacity, this genocidal reflex, feeds on the opium of expected solidarity from the top.
Stories have told that the rampaging Fulani herdsmen are not Nigerian. Given their ferocity and that similar incidents were reported even in core northern states, they are suspected to be migrants from
A sure way to start is urgently enunciating a disarmament programme. The wandering herdsman first needs to be engaged to turn in his AK-47 as the minimum pre-condition. Relevant security agencies should be directed to enforce this. The mass killings cannot continue.
It is commendable that President Buhari, by some policy steps already taken, has the clarity of mind to, at least, appreciate the real existential point at issue: the most sustainable source of pasture for the cattle. This had led
In fact, Ogbeh disclosed that based on Buhari's directive, arrangement had been concluded to import improved grass seeds to cultivate the proposed
Really, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Ranching provides more decency not only for the cattle-rearer themselves but also their herd. It enables the application of modern techniques in the animal husbandry. It provides clean water, hospital, schools and other facilities for the convenience of the dwellers. Studies have shown that the Nigerian cow suffers stunted growth partly because of the exceedingly harsh condition it is bred. For instance, it is estimated that the average Nigerian cow travels some
If properly harnessed, livestock has potential to raise our national GDP, especially now that there is a renewed clamour to diversify the economy from oil as mono product. According to a 2008 survey,
Today, no thanks to the herdsman's primitive rearing technique, less than one percent of the cattle population is managed commercially. It explains why the country still spends an average of N50b importing milk and other dairy products annually simply because the full potentials of cattle farming are left untapped. But a relatively smaller country like
Changing the Nigerian narratives for the better means rethinking the way we work and live.
*Odion is a former Commissioner for
Information, Edo State