Buhari, Fayose, Ugwuanyi, And This Bitch Of A Life

By Chuks Iloegbunam  

“If you are neutral in situations of in­justice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“The ultimate tragedy is not the op­pression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Vexed voices have, in exasperation, been asking where Reverend Father Ejike Camillus Mbaka is. They are absolutely right who expect the priest to speak up. People should ask where Bola Tinubu is, the one who covets the feat of unknotting Pandora’s Box. People should be asking where many other previously vocal Nigerians are. People should conduct an investigation on the seemingly abrupt dryness of Niyi Osundare’s inkpot, for he has put an incongruous halt to his fondness for poetizing on national ques­tions. All those experts on radio and television, all those incisive analysts on cyberspace and concourses – know you one thing! People have a right to ask what sneaked in and stole your voices. What crept in and rendered you incapable of standing up? What stealthily stymied your very humanity?

People also have another re­sponsibility, which in fact is more fundamental than pointing accus­ingly at the supposed guilty. People should be asking themselves where they stand.

People will, perhaps, temporar­ily desist from wondering whether Wole Soyinka had embarked on a journey out of the planet Earth. The Nobelist’s voice finally crashed against the wall of eviscerating in­justice: 

“Impunity evolves and be­comes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal, logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tol­erance for the serial massacres have become the nation’s identification stamp.

“I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated. The na­tion is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject ap­peasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.

“Let me repeat, and of course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have yet to encounter a terse, rigor­ous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram re­pudiate its founding clerics.”

The ‘Fulani’ Rampage

By Obi Nwakanma

 Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s current president is a passionate Fulani, and the Fulani are a transnational migrant group, dealing today with the forces of environmental change that are forcing great pressure on their pastoral culture. Armed Fulani-herdsmen as desertification intensifies in the Savanah regions, grazing and watering grounds disappear, and drives the herdsmen farther and farther out, seeking places to graze, occupy, or settle. The Fulani herdsmen are no strange sights in Nigeria. In fact J.P. Clark, one of Nigeria’s eminent poets, captures both the life of the Fulani herdsmen, but more specifically the resilience and silent will of the cattle in his poem, “Fulani Cattle.” And I should say that I myself have anticipated a great conflict.

 In my yet to be published novel, one of the characters, Simple, is lying in the solitude of his farm near the Orashi river, after a day’s work, and after smoking a little grass, and in the haze of sleep he hears the rustle of cattle in a neighboring farm and thinks, they better not come near my farm or I’ll draw blood. Something to that effect. It did occur to me quite early when I penned that scene that a real menace is brewing, unheeded, and it is the struggle for arable land. What did not occur to me, even in my wildest imagination, is the increasing dimension of war-like activities that now accompany Fulani pastoralists in their moves to settle new grazing areas by force, as the condition of the earth drives them further and further from the Sahel. It may just as well be old grazing pressure, but the recent spate and heightening of attacks of Southern agrarian towns by so-called “Fulani Herdsmen” is throwing many curveballs.

This menace has been reported in the North too, in places like Adamawa, the Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nassarawa and Benue, basically, mostly Christian areas of the North, where frequent attacks and resistance against the so-called “Fulani herdsmen” have been going on in the last two years with growing intensity. The thrust of the attacks has given rise to a religious dimension to this: the fear that the so-called Herdsmen are masking a greater menace: religious and political conquest of a scale comparable to colonialism. Such a possibility should not be dismissed as conspiracy, because indeed, most political and conquest movements are the products of conspiracies often publicly denied or even ignored until it is too late. So, the spate of attacks have increased with intensity, and some analysts have noted that the South, once seemingly buffered from these activities have become flashpoints, and areas of serious and rapid conflict involving the so-called “Fulani herdsmen,” since the election and swearing in of President Buhari. Is there a connection? I dare not think. 

The Trouble With Buhari's Approach To National Security

By Onyiorah Paschal Chiduluemije

The recent massacre of scores of fellow Igbo and brethren in our homeland by the invading and marauding Fulani herdsmen and the seem­ingly implicit endorsement of their cruelty by the government (judging of course by what could arguably be regarded as a mere formality condemnation on the part of the Presidency that reluc­tantly had to speak on this nas­ty development following public condemnation of almost notori­ous indifference and/or taciturni­ty on matters concerning increas­ing Fulani herdsmen bestiality under this administration) is not just heart-rending, but also it is an indication that there is indeed a deliberate and desperate attempt by this inept administration to generally provoke Ndigbo with a view to compelling them to de­but with their worst case scenario panacea to containing litany of of­fensives against them so far.

 

*Buhari

Just a couple of weeks ago or so, the Directorate of State Securi­ty Service (DSS) under the seem­ingly malfunctioning leadership of Alhaji Lawal Daura – a Fulani man – roundly surprised all sane minds, when it reportedly told the public that the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) allegedly mur­dered no less than Fulani folks in Abia state and readily buried them in a mass grave. Undoubt­edly, while many reasonable peo­ple across the globe still await to hear the last from the DSS in this regard and/or see proofs to sub­stantiate this preposterous asser­tion, it is increasingly crystal clear, as it were, that the only logically ascertainable prima facie intent of the leadership of the DSS under the watch of Muhammadu Bu­hari’s kinsman is to simply crim­inalise the IPOB in order to cre­ate and convey the impression to the international community that Ndigbo and Biafrans alike now parade their own wing of terror­ist group like the Hausa-Fulani Is­lamist terrorist Boko Haram sect. Indeed it is most unfortunate that under President Muhammadu Buhari, the DSS, a hitherto high­ly respected institution of the state, has abysmally become rid­iculed, compromised and relegat­ed to be serving the interest of the migrant Hausa-Fulani in Nigeria at the expense of the larger inter­ests of the real indigenous people of other nationalities of Nigeria.

Strangely enough, while the same leadership of the DSS un­der Alhaji Daura had never and still does not seem to care about disclosing to the public the actu­al number of lives that have been wasted under his watch by the marauding Fulani vermin in Ag­atu community of Benue state, among other places, and the level of damage done so far by his wan­dering kith and kin on the prop­erties of their host community, it is somewhat unbelievable that the DSS appears nowadays to be only “good” at and “alive” to its respon­sibilities whenever and where the interest and affairs of the Fulani/Hausa-Fulani become a fact in is­sue or are likely to be adversely affected vis-a-vis the competing interest and affairs of other folks.

What is more, it is by no means less disturbing, disappointing and, in fact, highly suspicious that despite early warning signals, in­dices and reports that reported­ly went viral within and beyond the Uzo Uwani L.G.A of Enugu State clearly pointing at the fact of the impending attack by the Fulani herdsmen, all the secu­rity agencies, including the sus­pect in the minds of many called the DSS, were understandably docile and as such most proba­bly inclined to treat the pre-at­tack concerns of this Igbo com­munity with near absolute levity, thereby invariably paving the way for the Fulani herdsmen to first carry out their dastardly and eth­nic cleansing act (perhaps in line with an already existing script) so as to later on avail President Mu­hammadu Buhari – their broth­er and patron – the opportunity and the much needed platform to broach and articulate the so-called “priority” of his “adminis­tration’s agenda” and “readiness to deploy all required personnel and resources to remove this new threat to the collective security of the nation”.

Enugu Massacre And The Hypocrisy Northern Governors

By Jude Ndukwe

Still in a mourning mood over the mindless massacre at Enugu by suspected Fulani herdsmen, the nation’s heavy heart was further daggered by what can best be described as the petulance of an arrogant set of governors from the northern part of the country who take pleasure in talking down on the other parts of the country and behave like a headmaster whose pupils must not have an opinion not to talk of expressing such without incurring his wrath.

Following the Ukpabi Nimbo incident in Enugu State, there was a general outpour of rage by all well-meaning Nigerians who thought, and rightly so too, that the president, Muhammadu Buhari, has not done enough to rein in the Fulani herdsmen despite their repeated reign of terror across the middle belt and southern parts of the country. Nigerians had thought the Agatu attack was the height of the continued attack by the herdsmen; they had thought the president would say something to, at least, placate the grieving community, but no word came from him. The worst was that those responsible for the heinous crime had a meeting with Nigeria’s chief police officer where they confessed to their crime, yet, were let go, strangely.

Also, Nigerians could not understand why Buhari gave marching orders to service chiefs to deal with pipeline vandals in the south southern part of the country but gave no such stern orders against the Fulani herdsmen until the public outrage that followed the Enugu massacre. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of Nigerians think that the Fulani herdsmen are enjoying tacit support from the powers that be to carry on their dastardly acts unchecked. This thought stems from Buhari’s actions and statements in the past where he had expressed and actually acted in support of the Fulani herdsmen who are also his kinsmen.

For example in October 2000, President Buhari had travelled all the way from Katsina State leading a  delegation of 5 men to the then governor of Oyo State, Lam Adeshina, to strongly protest the reprisal attack carried out on Fulani herdsmen by the Saki people of the state after the herdsmen had repeatedly attacked people of the area. The presence of Buhari and his delegation was said to have raised palpable tension in the state that they even refused to acknowledge pleasantries from government officials and left in anger without taking the refreshments served them by the governor. This was understandable as the governor, Lam Adeshina, was said to have properly addressed them and put them in their rightful place by warning them to stop parading around causing disunity where there was none!

With this in mind, Nigerians might not be wrong to have accused the president of not acting timeously against the herdsmen because of some ethnic and religious affinity he shares with them.

The Rise Of Fulani Militants As World 4th Terror

By Law Mefor  

It is a story of the untouchables. They grew bolder and stronger right under our watch, while entrenched political and busi­ness interests force government af­ter government to feign ignorance and look the other way as they commit atrocities. They prance through the lengths and breadths of Nigeria with AK47 assault ri­fles, machine guns and sundry war weapons, killing, raping, maiming and sacking and razing communi­ties without consequences.

Call them ‘Fulani militants’ or ‘Fulani herdsmen’ or ‘cattle rustlers’. Whatever you choose to call them, it is the same gang of criminals who have grown and gained global record, since 2014, as the world’s 4th deadliest terror group, inferior only to ISIS, Al- Shabaab and of cause their kin called Boko Haram.

The latest in their trail of sor­row, tears and blood (as Fela would put it) is the ongoing Agatu mas­sacre, which prompted President Muhammadu Buhari, himself a Fulani, to order an investigation on February 28, 2016. Before the Agatu massacre, cattle herdsmen and cattle rustlers have caused similar mayhem in most parts of the Middle Belt, especially Plateau, Kogi and Benue. Other parts of the country are equally not spared by the rampaging brigands - Kaduna, Enugu, Imo, Zamfara, Kano, Kat­sina and many other States all have tales of woe about their gory visita­tions.

They come in the dead of the night when villagers are deep asleep and set their houses on fire. Those who manage to escape are shot. Their brazen killing of over 60 in Zamfara in 2014 was an opera­tion that lasted for hours with law enforcement agents doing nothing. From experience, therefore, noth­ing comes out of investigations launched into their evil activities and this has made them to grow wilder and stronger.

They are brazen and fearless and appear to enjoy consider­able political cover from the high and mighty. For example, rather than help find solutions to these increasing wars between Fulani militants and farmers, some peo­ple who are in a position to broker peace encourage their activities. Such persons like Mallam Nasir El- Rufai, former minister of the FCT and now Governor of Ka­duna State, who rather than find solutions to such threat to national security, could only tweet on July 15, 2012: “We will write this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not, that kills the Fulani takes a loan repay­able one day no matter how long it takes”. Tacit approvals of such divi­sive and dangerous activities and unwitting protectiveness of those who perpetrate them, are no doubt contributing to their brazenness, arson and murder.

Their growth has been alarm­ingly steady and Government re­sponse only half-hearted. In 2013, the Fulani militants killed around 80 people in total. But by 2014, the group had killed 1,229. Operating mainly in the Middle Belt of Ni­geria and has also been known to stage attacks in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to the latest report from the Global Ter­rorism Index, the group has now gained reputation as a terror group.

Who Could Replace Robert Mugabe In Zimbabwe? [VIDEO]

*President Mugabe and wife, Grace

At 92 years of age, Robert Mugabe is the oldest-serving head of state on the African continent, and one of the oldest in the world.

But as time goes on and the president’s health comes under scrutiny, the national conversation in Zimbabwe is increasingly dominated by calls for Mugabe to step down and debates about who could replace him.

Earlier in April, thousands of supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, took to the streets in the capital Harare in the biggest opposition demonstration seen in Zimbabwe for years. Despite calls from the influential veterans of Zimbabwe’s independence war—in which the president himself fought—to step aside, Mugabe remains resolute as ever, saying he will stay in the post until he is 100 and will only hand over the presidency when “God says ‘come.’”

Newsweek considers who might replace the country’s only post-independence leader when—and if—he steps down.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE REPORT 

Terror Nomads And Official Consent

By Louis Odion

I received an agitated call a fortnight ago from the most unexpected quarters. It was a response to the column written on the plague of trigger-happy herdsmen festering across the land.

The caller, a successful entrepreneur-cum-polemist and understandably a southerner, frowned at the writer's tone which he considered too conciliatory to the murderous nomads and, according to him, indulging official indifference with a reluctance to use harsh words. 

Honestly, I had thought the nation was already dragged into the perimeter of danger and the moral obligation of the columnist is to exercise utmost restraint in the circumstance; not inflaming passion any further.

In the said piece, one had enjoined the president not to leave the nation in doubt where he stands at this grave moment. One wrote: "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."

But with the latest pogrom in Enugu on Monday, one now feels compelled by a sense of shame to admit that the blood of the innocent is probably on those of us whose circumspection, ordinarily a respectable gesture of moderation, would have inadvertently stirred in the victims a will not to resort to self-help, naively hoping a bunch of unreconstructed savages could be overpowered with the show of civility. From what is now known, the aggressors seem emboldened all along to scale up their barbarism by every turn, aware the rest of the society are unwilling to lift a finger. The latest killing of 48 citizens in Enugu in cold blood was totally avoidable had the various security agencies under federal command been alive to their duties.

Sadly, the villagers of Ukpabi Nimbo saw their own assassins coming days ahead. But the authorities failed to take steps to shield them. Coming barely a month after the Agwu 76 were abducted by "unknown soldiers" from the same Enugu and held hostage in Abia for protesting the herdsmen's excesses, nothing could be more provocative. Among the latest casualties was of a fresh graduate, Eze Patrick Okechukwu, who just passed out from the NYSC few days ago, and an octogenarian who, at such fragile age, must have looked forward to a peaceful transition. 

Their spokesman, George Ajogu, put things in perspective Tuesday when the state officials joined them to count their dead: "Had the security agencies responded appropriately, this would not have happened. (The herdsmen) did not take us unawares, we knew they were coming. Because we lack security, the Fulani come here and tell us the land is theirs. They tell the farmers to kneel down and they rape the women in front of their husbands."

Elsewhere in Obiaruku in Delta State the following day, the ubiquitous armed herdsmen also went on rampage. No fewer than eight farmers were seized from their farms in apparent retaliation of alleged killing of four cows in the locality. The captives were only released later in the afternoon after the youths had mobilized. 

Given the brutality of the slaughter and the intensity of destruction of homes (including churches), it was clear the Enugu attack was carefully planned and clinically executed. Strangely, the president only broke his silence Wednesday after the deed had been done. It apparently took the outrage expressed from a section of the country over the latest killings before the Commander-in-Chief formally deemed it necessary to direct a crackdown on these killing gangs. The message was delivered by Information Minister Lai Mohammed. 

But considering the gravity of the issues now raised, the least expected is Buhari speaking directly to the nation. In the circumstance, timing is every thing. The message and the messenger arrived almost too late.

The burden of guilt over the blood already shed is therefore more on the president who seems unable to read or appreciate that the growing epidemic of murder, its geographical slant, the attendant ethnic eruptions and social disruptions do not just undermine his credibility as a unifying leader but also the stability of the nation at large. It is high time he realized there has to be a country first before he can be addressed as a president. 

The other day, the government did not consider it out of place to liken pipeline vandalization to terrorism, putting the saboteurs on notice they would henceforth receive the Boko Haram treatment. So, why was it so difficult for the president to come out openly and read the riot's act to the band of murderers who undoubtedly constitute much bigger threat, in fact seemingly hell-bent on putting a sharp knife on the last strand of the already threadbare gaiter tremulously latching the nation together? Really, the impression thus unwittingly created is that the oil flowing in the pipeline is more treasured than the blood flowing in the veins of the citizens.

On Tuesday, the Emir of Ilorin, Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, lent his weighty voice to the popular clamour for a decisive step before too late: "It behoves on the Federal Government to be more serious on the issue so that it doesn't become another Boko Haram on our hands." Though, he believes the AK-47 -wielding herders are not Fulani but "wandering and migrating tribe of people going everywhere." If indeed they are "foreigners", then the puzzle: why is it so difficult for the Nigerian state to frontally take the supposed "invaders" out?

What the latest Enugu massacre again underscores is the gross inadequacy of the nation's current security architecture and the imperative of one that is responsive and responsible to local need. Today, the security forces in every state are not answerable to the resident political authorities. Even in the hour of emergency, Abuja's order is still considered superior to that of the state governor. It explains why the state security meeting summoned by the Enugu governor Sunday following credible intelligence that something sinister was afoot ended up in vain. Various pledges of commitment made by the local heads of all the security agencies at the meeting (said to have dragged till early hours ofMonday) were of no consequence when the attackers struck at Ukpabi Nimbo few hours later.

Much more fundamental is the alienation of the security personnel themselves. In perpetuation of the unitarist credo of military rule, officers are deployed outside their ethnic origin. In the moment of temptation, most then naturally view conflicts from ethno-religious lens. It probably explains why when the villagers of Ukpabi Nimbo cried out for help for days, no one seemed to have understood their language. 

Sadder still, on Wednesday, I read an article in The Nation entitled "Ranches Or Prison For Herdsmen?" written by Sale Bayari, the Secretary-General of the cattle farmers known as Gan Allah Fulani Development Association (GAFDAN), and my heart sank. In case Bayari was speaking for all members, then more troubles still lie ahead. So far, the only silver lining in the dark clouds was the assurance that the stakeholders and the relevant authorities had narrowed down the options to either setting up ranches or grazing reserves to fix the perennial clashes between herdsmen and farm-owners. 

Given deep cultural complexities of the country on top of pervasive ethnic suspicion, the consensus is that the option of ranch will be more feasible for now. But Bayari argues passionately that the herders would settle for nothing other than grazing reserve. Curiously, this seems to be Buhari's own thinking, with the Agric minister announcing few weeks ago that arrangement had been concluded to import improved grass seeds to cultivate the proposed 50,000 hectares of grazing reserves within six months.

Plausible as he might sound, Bayari's argument hardly takes into account the sensibilities of other ethnic stakeholders, particularly people of the Middle Belt and the entire south who view the idea of setting up grazing reserves across the country today as a dangerous seed that will, in foreseeable future, germinate into a Fulani take-over of the Nigerian space in entirety, thereby fulfilling jihadist Othman Dan Fodio's expansionist vision more than two centuries ago. 

Much as Bayari is free to dream of grazing land without borders, fear of possible acculturation harbored by others can however not be wished away.

Perhaps, a taste of what to expect came from Oyo during the week. Without mincing words, Governor Abiola Ajimobi declared not an inch of his state territory will be ceded to Buhari's grazing reserves: "This is the time to call a spade a spade. Those clamouring for creation of grazing zones across the country should have a rethink. It is against the Land Use Act. It is against the law of natural justice to seize people's land to cater for someone's cattle."

Obviously, Buhari now faces the first real acid test that may potentially define his presidency. 

Mr. Odion is former Commissioner of Information, Edo State

Mr. President, Get Herdsmen Off Our Farms!

By MajiriOghene Etemiku  

As part of what I do in my spare time, and in line with my belief that the earth is the Lord’s with the fullness thereof, I tend a farm in my compound. On that little farm, I cultivate shallow rooted crops like maize, watermelons, tomato and pumpkins leaves and manage a mini poultry. Every morning after my family wakes up and finish with our prayers, we descend on our farm.  And on weekends I would gather the whole family together to weed the farm, tend and water our crops. While in the farm, the feeling is akin to obedience to a holy injunction that we should till the earth, subdue and take care of it.

*Buhari 

Some of my friends and colleagues who have seen my farm are pleasantly surprised at the emerald effervescence of my maize, melon and pumpkin. They have no idea that I had taken the trouble to visit the ADP in Benin City for healthy seedlings which I understand can be harvested in three instead of six months it takes for crops to mature. I know that Nigerians are a laid-back lot, preferring to import food rather than grow it. My wife has happily taken to harvesting pumpkin and water leaves from this farm with which she prepares the family’s favourite – vegetable soup.

I don’t joke with my farm. I am my farm, my farm is me. Even though it is not as large and as capital-intensive as the Obasanjo Farms, I take great pride in it. I see myself as a metaphor for the thousands in my village Uzere who have invested time, money and their lives into eking a living from the land like our ancestors. Touch my farm, go near it and you would be looking for trouble. I remember growing up as a child in Uzere – that I ate so much fish and so much kpokpo gari to the extent that it seemed like paradise.

Over the years, however, as a result of the activities of the Nigerian government and its cohorts, the multinationals that prospect for oil to feed Nigeria, nearly every piece of land and river has been polluted. The pawpaw trees are dead, the cassava, the yams are not growing anymore and that is because the soil is soaked with crude oil. The rivers where we once took a haul of shrimps and baskets of eba and ero fishes, where we once took our bath and drinking water are all dried up. In their places are artificial lakes, aka burrow pits that have dislocated the aquatic balance of our community. When it rains, we dare not drink the water, and that is because gases that have been flared since 1957 in my village coagulate and return as gooey residue on the pots and pans which we put outside to collect the rain water. These were the issues that Ogoni leader, Kenule Saro-Wiwa, took head on, and which his predecessor Isaac Adaka Boro championed before they were killed.

Cattle Herdsmen As The New Boko Haram?

By Reuben Abati 
“No matter how far the town, there is another beyond it” – Fulani Proverb.

There has been so much emotionalism developing around the subject of the recent clashes between nomadic pastoralists and farmers, and the seeming emergence of the former as the new Boko Haram, forbidding not Western education this time, but the right of other Nigerians to live in peace and dignity, and to have control over their own geographical territory. From Benue, to the Plateau, Nasarawa, to the South West, the Delta, and the Eastern parts of the country, there have been very disturbing reports of nomadic pastoralists killing at will, raping women, and sacking communities, and escaping with their impunity, unchecked, as the security agencies either look the other way or prove incapable of enforcing the law.  The outrage South of the Sahel is understandable. It is argued, rightly or wrongly, that the nomadic pastoralist has been overtaken by a certain sense of unbridled arrogance arising from that notorious na-my-brother-dey-power mentality and the assumption that “the Fulani cattle” must drink water, by all means, from the Atlantic Ocean.

It is this emotional ethnicization of the crisis that should serve as a wake-up call for the authorities, and compel the relevant agencies to treat this as a national emergency deserving of pro-active measures and responses. It is not enough to issue a non-committal press statement or make righteous noises and assume that the problem will resolve itself. Farmer-pastoralist conflict poses a threat to national security. It is linked to a number of complex factors, including power, history, citizenship rights and access to land. Femi Fani-Kayode in a recent piece has warned about Nigeria being “on the road to Kigali”, thus referring to the genocide that hobbled Rwanda in the 90s as the Hutus and the Tutsis drew the sword against each other. Fani-Kayode needs not travel all the way to Rwanda. Ethnic hate has done so much damage in Nigeria already; all we need is to learn from history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Ethnic hate, serving as sub-text to the January 1966 and July 1966 coups, for example, set the stage for the civil war of 1967 -70. The root of Igbo-Hausa/Fulani acrimony can be traced back to that season when Igbos were slaughtered in the North, the Hausa/Fulani were slaughtered in the East and Nigeria found itself in the grip of a “To Thy Tents, O Israel” chorus. Ethnic hate also led to the Tiv riots, crisis in the Middle Belt since then, and the perpetual pitching of one ethnic group against the other in Nigeria’s underdeveloped politics. We should be careful.

Rethinking The National Assembly

Lewis Obi

It took the distribution of exquisite luxury cars that cost N57 million apiece to members of the Senate to shock Nigerians from their slumber and resignation. To a great many Ni­gerians, the National Assembly has become like the malady without cure, which must be endured. Perhaps the nearly N3 billion spent on vehicles the senators did not need, at a time the nation could not afford it, might be the overreach that finally serves as the last straw.

It might not. But the “Occupy National As­sembly” protests which began earlier in the week was a signal that at last Nigerians are beginning to lose their cool and are starting to voice it out.

The demands of the protesters were modest: immediate resignation of the Senate President, Dr. Olusola Saraki; the return of the expensive vehicles by the senators; and the revision of the 2016 budget. In a real democracy, the stu­dents and others who staged the “Occupy Na­tional Assembly” would never have needed to protest. A senate president facing something akin to felony and perjury charges would not need a reminder to step aside. It’s expected to be automatic. The vehicle purchase by the senate was a clear case of abuse of power, a flagrant misuse of the constitutional power of the purse, and the senate cannot point to any country in the world where such a purchase would be contemplated much less executed.

Nigeria has never been a nation of pro­testers, a fact which tyrants have exploited to perpetrate all kinds of enormities in the military dictatorship era. Now the National Assembly has latched on the same theory to stand democracy on its head and to contin­ue to assume that Nigerians wouldn’t know the difference.

Senate Majority Leader Ali Ndume took on the protesters and was quoted in a newspaper as saying that no form of pro­test would force anyone to resign from the National Assembly because the protest­ers were not the people who elected them in the first place. The 107 vehicles would not be returned because they were meant for the senators to carry out their various committee assignments and the vehicles remain the property of the National As­sembly. On television Senator Ndume said that the National Assembly was the differ­ence between autocracy or dictatorship and democracy. In other words, take away the National Assembly and all you have is dic­tatorship.

Senator Ndume is never given to mod­esty and when he speaks Nigerians see a tyrant in democratic garb. The reason no form of protest would force anyone to re­sign from the National Assembly is because the National Assembly is not a democratic institution in the first place. With very few exceptions, the seats were bought and paid for in millions, sometimes, hundreds of mil­lions of Naira of dubiously acquired wealth which partly accounts for the desperation of members to claw at everything and use all kinds of machinations in their quest for wealth in order to retain their positions.

Fuel Scarcity And A Culture Of Scapegoat

By Ikeogu Oke   

Reading some of the public commentaries – and other forms of reactions –   on the current fuel crisis and associated issues, I was reminded of why I opposed the controversial call to kill the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) made last year by a prominent Nigerian politician. The politician reportedly summed up his justification for the call with the words: “If you don’t kill the NNPC, it will kill Nigeria.” Clearly, those words should incline all patriotic Nigerians to see the country’s survival and theirs as dependent on their killing NNPC at a time when, due to various factors, its popularity was arguably at its nadir.

Prominent among those factors were allegations of massive corruption and chronic mismanagement. And since we would naturally like to survive together with our country and be rid of things that pose a fatal threat to our joint existence (as the call implies about NNPC), I believe the politician in question expected us to accept the kill-or-be-killed scenario he created and act like people who understand that self-preservation is the first law of nature. An instance of the instigation or blackmail to kill for supposed self-preservation couldn’t have been more subtle or effective to the discerning mind.

Now, one of such public commentaries is Moses E. Ochonu’s “Dr. Kachikwu’s Blunders” – published recently in Sahara Reporters and Premium Times – which more or less sums up the predicament of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources in managing the current fuel scarcity in the country thus: “Whatever he is doing is not working… The man thrives on deception and propaganda…. He deserves whatever opprobrium is heaped on him.” Let me say en passant that this sort of criticism is too harsh and demoralising. The function of the responsible social critic is to build hope while identifying problems, and not to demoralise. Ochonu’s criticism demoralises by its unjustified total condemnation of its target and his efforts, and by spreading despair.

And by other forms of reactions, I refer to such call made by the leaders of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on the Network News of the Africa Independent Television (AIT) on April 11, 2016, asking for the minister’s resignation.

Insurgency By Other Means

By Amanze Obi

I have just been reading one of the most re­cently published books on the Biafran War in which Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon was quoted as saying, through his August 3, 1966 broadcast to the nation, that the basis for Nigeria’s unity no longer existed. Gowon was then Nigeria’s Head of State. His broadcast was fallout of the ominous events of the period. A revenge coup had just taken place in which Igbo military of­ficers were systematically eliminated by their northern counterparts. 

*Gowon and Buhari 

Because Gowon, a lily-livered officer from the Middle Belt, could not but do the bidding of the northern oligarchs who controlled him, his government could not protect the defenceless Igbo officers. He could also not protect the Igbo civilian population in the north. An organised massacre otherwise known as pogrom carried out against the Igbo under the watch of Gowon saw to the elimina­tion of about one million Igbo in the North. The result was the Biafran War in which a Gowon, who had earlier told the world that the basis for Nigeria’s unity no longer existed, suddenly declared that keeping Nigeria united was a task that must be done.

Ordinarily, we should be saying that the rest is now history. But we cannot. The wound is as fresh as ever. Gowon says he is now praying for the country, which he brought to its knees. That is hypocrisy at play. His occasional inter­jections on Biafra usually betray his private convictions. Gowon is, therefore, deceiving no one but himself with his prayer project.

We cannot also say that the events of January 1966 to January 1970 are now history because there has always been a constant playback of the insanity of the era. Nigeria has, from time to time, been engulfed by ethnic flames. Our governments, as pretentious as ever, have al­ways papered over such developments. They have always made them appear as if they were isolated occurrences. But we know that such sectional strifes are a constant staple on Nige­ria’s table.

The present security situation in the country clearly betrays and exposes the institutionalised pretences that successive governments in Ni­geria have been taking us through. They have always told us that Nigeria is a great country of diverse peoples, who have great faith in the entity. We may not quarrel with this romantic and paradisal portrayal of Nigeria. After all, it is not a crime to engage in mental flights. But when we refuse to face reality, then we have ourselves to blame for the lack and loss that it may bring about.

We have seen Boko Haram insurgency for what it is – a murderous quest by Islamic fun­damentalists to extend the frontiers of Islam in Nigeria. The affront has cost Nigeria so much in human and material terms. Yet, the misguid­ed religious zealots have not come anywhere close to realising their objectives. The insur­gency has remained a northern phenomenon. Boko Haram has no foothold anywhere in southern Nigeria.

But it would appear that whatever Boko Ha­ram has failed to achieve in the South, the Fu­lani herdsmen have undertaken to accomplish. I did say in this column a fortnight ago that we should be imaginative a bit in this matter. We should stop to ask why herdsmen, who have been roaming the length and breath of Nigeria for years on end have suddenly become a prob­lem. Is cattle-rearing a new phenomenon in Nigeria? We know it is not. So, why has it sud­denly become a blight in the land? We should ponder this question.

I suspect, as I hinted earlier, that Fulani herdsmen have undertaken to accomplish a task, which Boko Haram, for logistical rea­sons, could not broach. The recent activities of Fulani herdsmen in southern Nigeria is sug­gestive of insurgency. It is Boko Haram in a different form and shape. And the target is to infiltrate the South of the country, which the conventional Boko Haram could not penetrate. That is the way it starts.

This Could Lead To War

By Ochereome Nnanna

 ON Wednesday last week, I was at the Enugu State High Court to attend a session. Shortly before 10am, a large number of prisoners, accompanied by their wardens, arrived. 

President Buhari The prisoners’ warden who came to our own courtroom with his wards stood with us in the corridor as the court was packed with lawyers, plaintiffs, respondents, court staff and other interested persons. After a while, a discussion naturally came up about the menace of Fulani cattle herders all over the country.

The prison warden who obviously hailed from Enugu State opened up and said the situation in the state was “horrible”. “I went to my hometown last weekend. I was just resting in my room in the afternoon when, all of a sudden I started hearing ‘hm-hm-hm’. I looked out of my window into my garden. I was shocked at what I saw: cows everywhere! They were eating everything in the garden. I came out and saw three young Fulani men. They were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, the type that we in the Service never have the opportunity to touch. The boys just looked at me and continued to mind their cows. There was nothing I could do because I knew they were ready to shoot at any slightest opportunity”.

Barely five days later on Monday, 25th April, there was breaking news all over the Internet on an outbreak of fighting between Fulani herdsmen and indigenes in Nimbo, Uzo Uwani Local Government Area, a northern precinct of Enugu State. According to the news which was later confirmed, seven villages in Nimbo (Nimbo Ngwoko, Ugwuijoro, Ekwuru, Ebor, Enugu Nimbo, Umuome, and Ugwuachara) were attacked by the herdsmen, leaving between 40 and 48 people dead (many with their throats slit, Boko Haram style) and over 60 injured. 

Residential homes and a church were razed. Indigenes of the community fled to nearby Nsukka town. Can I hear you say: “Agatu Season 2”? Come to think of it: Agatu is not far from Uzo Uwani. Benue and Enugu share a common boundary. It would seem that, having “conquered” Agatu, the Fulani militia deployed to take over the South East. News had it that days to the attack, there were rumours that 500 heavily-armed Fulani militiamen were camped in the bushes ready to attack. The Directorate of State Service (DSS) under Director General, Alhaji Lawal Daura, did nothing about it. DSS could not re-enact the speed and expedition with which they allegedly discovered fifty corpses in shallow graves in Abia State, five of which they identified as being those of people of Fulani stock, though they did not tell us the ethnic background of the rest forty five dead men. 

It was not until these vandals had despatched innocent and defenceless villagers to their early graves that we got reports of police and military deployment to the area. Perhaps, they were there to shut the stable door after the horse had escaped. That is the type of “law enforcement” the security agencies of this country are very good at providing. Before now, people were asking who these “herdsmen” really were. For me, it is not just who they are that matters the most, as that is now obvious. What interests me more is: what really is their mission?

Rampaging Fulani Herdsmen: Time To Tame The Monster

Mike Ozekhome

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, we saw Fulani herdsmen, herding their cattle along the then desolate Agenebode-Auchi Road. The cattle defecated on the road, in a trail that stretched across kilometres. We would clap, dance and welcome them with songs of “malu, kova, daba daba kova, ikpisa yeghe the lakhia, edu nukpotha mho abo, ne the gbe la kpu kpu” (cows with hooves, being led by idle old men, who wield sticks with which they flogged them ceaselessly).

The herdsmen, sticks across their shoulders, large straw Panama hats on their heads, a pitcher of water, visible amulets on their necks and arms, would simply smile at our innocence, and pass by. The relationship between them and the natives was tranquil and cordial. These were those good old days. Not anymore. Times have since changed.

The modern herdsmen

The modern Fulani herdsmen constitute a bunch of rampaging, combatant armies, wielding modern day sophisticated weapons. They invade whole communities as they did Agatu, take them hostage, maim, kill, set their houses ablaze, rape their women and daughters and shoot down the youth, escaping the inferno of homes they set ablaze. In their orgy of violence, armed robbery, carnage and bloodbath, comparable only to the invidious and incidious Boko Haram insurgency, they kidnap and murder in cold blood, traditional rulers, women, men and even clerics. No one is safe. No farmer escapes their unprovoked wrath.

They leave their host communities dehumanised and traumatised in pains, pangs, sweat, tears, sorrow and blood. Indigenes become strangers on their land, sleeping in the forests, or where they still do, in their communities, with one eye open. Farmers are wholly displaced from their ancestral lands. From Agatu to Agenebode, Ubulu Uku to Okada, Lokoja to Ondo, Mbaise to Oyo, it is the same story of palpable neo-colonialism and recolonisation, by a new set of acolytes of powerful mechantilistic cattle czars. The traditional ruler of Ubulu Uku was killed in cold blood, in most horrendous and horrific circumstances. Sophisticated weapons are freely brandished and used, perhaps, the only set of Nigerians that can wield weapons openly and brazenly, without sanctions or repercussions. Elder statesman, Chief Olu Falae, was kidnapped, right in his own farm, by these terrorists. His family paid ransom for his release. The herdsmen have only recently just descended on the same farm and killed Falae’s security guard. The septuagenarian nationalist cried aloud that he did not know what they want with him.

These few examples are only known because of their high profile nature. Thousands of Nigerians undergo this new orgy of violence every day, without mention.

The incubation of national explosion by the  National Assembly

Getting Paid For Blunders

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

At the height of the recession in 2008, those on the sidelines of the corporate world were scandalised by the blithe ease with which chief executive officers (CEOS) of companies, especially those in the United States were giving themselves hefty compensation. This came in the form of robust salaries, bonuses, stock option, severance pay and  other  benefits. Even those CEOs whose remorseless mismanagement of their companies triggered financial catastrophes that led to the collapse of their institutions and the loss of jobs by thousands of workers gave themselves robust reward packages. Of course, nobody would have protested if the compensation the CEOs were giving themselves were a reward for making their companies to meet their organisational goals, even surpass them and bring prosperity to their shareholders and workers.

Even in Nigeria, in the midst of the crisis, some CEOs, especially those of banks were busy buying private jets and fancy vehicles for themselves and acquiring properties all over the world. But after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) took over some of these banks, there were several allegations of how these CEOs who were living big were actually deploying their organisations’ finances including those of shareholders and depositors to cater to their lavish lifestyles. While some of these CEOs were deprived of their banks, others managed to return to those institutions in higher capacities as chairmen. But before the crisis eased, some shareholders of these banks who sold their houses and used all their life savings to invest in them had taken their own lives.

Recent developments at MTN, a telecommunications giant, evoke the sad memories of the global recession. The MTN forced its CEO in South Africa and his counterpart in Nigeria to resign when they bungled a directive by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to register the telephone numbers of its subscribers in Nigeria. Outraged, the Nigerian government through the NCC asked the company to pay a N1.4 trillion fine. The matter has dragged on, and despite the MTN’s hiring of a U.S. attorney to negotiate with the Nigerian government, no truce has been brokered. The crisis has inflicted a heavy toll: the prices of the company’s shares have crashed on the South African stock exchange, jobs have been lost and some subscribers of the company have switched patronage. It was amid these developments that the news broke this week that MTN has paid the two former CEOs a severance package worth N560 million.

All these developments tend to reinforce the notion that in the world of business there is neither justice nor morality. Or else why should the CEOs who created problems for the company be the ones to be rewarded while the other stakeholders in the company, including  employees and shareholders are made to either suffer job loss or a cut in salary if at all they are still employed while  investors have the value of their shares whittled down? In justifying the payment of CEOs after taking their organisations through paths that are paved with calamitous consequences, there is often the argument that they are experts who take risks on behalf of their companies. But such an argument is invalidated in so far as whatever risk the CEOs may have taken that does not redound to the bottom line of their companies should elicit censure and not seeming approbation. Indeed, it is not because the CEOs are right that they succeed in paying themselves heavy compensation after making their companies to suffer huge losses. It is rather that through a certain canny dispensation of favour to those who could have challenged them, they rather get their support.