Prof. Ango Abudullahi’s Northern Elders Forum (NEF) just upped the ante — Fulani herders, battered, pummelled and demonised as unfazed crime champions of southern (read South West) forests, should leave the South and come home, up North!
Nigerian unity, the body quipped, should not be at the expense of the prized lives of herders; even as irate southern voices also growl that their farmers’ blood, allegedly being spilled by the rampaging herders, is not worth the expense of eating cow.
It was extremists’ clash and counter-clash. The good thing though, was that moderating and saner voices came slamming the return home diktat.
The President told the herders to ignore the NEF call. Surprisingly, that was one call the coterie of southern cynics and extremists didn’t feast on, as latest evidence of President Muhammadu Buhari’s “nepotism”. On that, all appears quiet on the southern front.
The Southwest governors have also weighed in: banish the thought; the herders stay! Hardball has so far not picked up any whispering campaign, ridiculing these governors as effete house Negroes to the Fulani super-master — not yet, any way.
Both Abuja and South West capitals have earned commendation for those restraining voices. NEF’s was a dangerous challenge that echoed, all over again, the catastrophe of 1966, which climaxed in civil war. Both Abuja and the South West governors have rightly slammed it. It was the correct, noble and patriotic thing to do.
But again, that brink shows the roaring danger of ethnic profiling. Even if “Fulani herdsmen” were guilty of all the South West forest crimes adduced to them — highly unlikely — the NEF challenge proved that everyone, guilty or innocent, could play by ethnic blazes. It’s all a question of felt ethnic insults for that conflagration to flare!
That’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow any one any good. That is why sane and moderate voices must always take charge and dominate.
The principle of “banning” herdsmen from specific localities could apply to all spheres of life. That could put, in jeopardy, every Nigerian working outside his native area.
But that might just be the least of the crisis. It could easily snowball into targeted ethnic killings and counter-killings, since the driving force appears ethnic incense, not aversion to crime.
The Federal Government and South West governors have done well to shrug off the danger. But the next step must be identifying the criminals and openly make them pay.
Again, it goes without saying that the unity of purpose that weakened the NEF call is also needed to go after the criminals, and make South West forests safe again.
The people on their part must be wary of demagogues, pushing their personal loathing as collective ethnic ire. People should decry criminality, no matter where the criminal comes from.
That way, South West forests will be safe and secure again, without assailing the pride and ethnic consciousness of others, by wholesale dubbing them criminals without proof.
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