How To Stop Herdsmen Killings In Nigeria

By Luke Onyekakeyah

President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent statement urging Nigerians to be patient while his security chiefs are racking their brains to tackle the ongoing killings across the country puts the administration at a tight corner. The implication is that government has no strategy yet to deal with a deadly pogrom targeting innocent hapless folks across the country.

The president ought not to have made such statement as that would embolden the killers. How could you tell your enemy who is out to eliminate you that you are still racking brain to know how to tackle him? The statement is self defeatist and totally uncalled for. 

Nigeria: Herdsmen’s Killings And A Forsaken Nation

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

I was very rudely awakened from a deep sleep today’s wee hours by a rash of text messages that buzzed noisily for nearly a minute.

These messages were six in number and came in torrents from family members and friends who live in Aba, Abia State; Ogoja in Cross Rivers State and Otukpo in Benue State.

*President Buhari 

These hugely unexpected messages had similar information on the rumoured invasions simultaneously of these places of their habitation by armed gangs of Fulani herdsmen who are said to be getting ready to invade some communities which are agrarian and whose land owners had protested earlier cases of invasions by cows and herdsmen resulting in the destruction of their crops that are awaiting harvest.

Planned Detention Of Apostle Suleiman, Bishop Oyedepo: Don't Plunge Nigeria Into Religious Crisis, Fayose Cautions DSS

PRESS RELEASE 

Ekiti State Governor and Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum, Mr. Ayodele Fayose has warned the Department of State Services (DSS) over the planned detention and trial of Apostle Johnson Suleiman of The Omega Fire Ministries Worldwide and the General Overseer of Living Faith Church Worldwide International (Winners' Chapel International), Bishop David Oyedepo, describing it as indirect invitation to religious crisis in the country.

*Bishop Oyedepo

Governor Fayose alleged that, "There is plan to charge Apostle Suleiman and Bishop Oyedepo for incitement and attempt to cause public disorder on Friday, and make sure that they are not granted bail so to get them remanded in Kuje Prison perpetually."

He said this plan was to humiliate these men of God as well as silence them and create fear in other people that may want to speak against the heinous crime against humanity being committed daily while perpetrators are being shielded by the federal government.

In a statement issued on Sunday by is Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said the DSS should tell Nigerians how many of the Fulani herdsmen that killed thousands of Nigerians across the country have been arrested before going after Nigerians who merely expressed their frustration over the to failure of the federal government to protect them.

The governor said: "Even though the DSS has allowed commonsense to prevail by properly inviting Apostle Suleiman as against the gestapo manner with which the service attempted to abduct him last week Wednesday, it is still questionable that the DSS is more interested in a man who threatened to defend himself against any attack by Fulani herdsmen rather than those herdsmen that murdered thousands of Nigerians.”