Sanya Oni
IT took two separate – though very related – events in the past week to lay bare any remaining pretences about the state of our union, the sanctity of the so-called constitution and, the impotence of our institutions.
The first is the order by the Ondo State governor, Rotimi Akeredolu’s on herdsmen to vacate all forest reserves in the state within seven days with effect from last week Monday. The governor had also banned night-grazing with immediate effect because, according to him, most farm destruction takes place at night. In the same vein, movement of cattle within cities and highways across the state was also prohibited.
The other is the seven-day ‘quit notice’ issued by the Yoruba activist, Sunday Adeyemo a.k.a. Sunday Igboho, on Fulani settlers in Igangan, Ibarapa North Local Government Area.
The first was clearly a revelation in the Buhari administration’s penchant for cant and subterfuge over a matter that demanded tact, wisdom, even-handedness and if you like, some dose of magisterial detachment. For whereas the governor, a learned Silk, could not be accused of sloppiness with his clear, unambiguous directives, the Presidency on the other hand, which has all of these while, been practically AWOL while the spectre of insecurity raged, couldn’t be persuaded that the directives meant no more than the elegantly worded text – which is that the forest reserves, over which the state government has exclusive proprietary rights, and which had become a haven for criminal activities, should return to its original purpose!
For the purpose of clarity, here is what Governor Akeredolu said: “We have taken major steps at addressing the root cause of kidnapping, in particular, and other nefarious activities detailed and documented in security reports, the press, and debriefings from victims of kidnap cases in Ondo State.
“These unfortunate incidents are traceable to the activities of some bad elements masquerading as herdsmen…These felons have turned our forest reserves into hideouts for keeping victims of kidnapping, negotiating for ransom, and carrying out other criminal activities.
“As the Chief Law and Security Officer of the state, it is my constitutional obligation to do everything lawful to protect the lives and property of all residents of the state.
“ Under-aged grazing of cattle is outlawed. In its usual magnanimity, our administration will give a grace period of seven days for those who wish to carry on with their cattle-rearing business to register with appropriate authorities.
“Our resolution to guarantee safety of lives and property within the state shall remain utmost as security agencies have been directed to enforce the ban.”
To the above, our not-exactly-disinterested presidency would resort to the puerile arguments on the “need to delink terrorism and crimes from ethnicity, geographical origins and religion…!
Who is doing the linking here? The governor sworn to uphold the law or those who choose to interpret well-meaning directives designed to secure the peace for the greater majority from the narrow prism of ethnicity and religion? We are referring to those who not only appropriate undeserved privileges but see them as something to be defended at all costs?
Talk of a sense of priority not only egregious but most dubious. Clearly, if the Presidency chose to feign ignorance to the Ondo State Forestry Law regime (Forestry Law of Western State and National Forestry Policy, 2006), which I understand, makes it a criminal trespass for an individual to occupy a forest reserve without obtaining permit from the state government through the forestry department of the agriculture ministry, couldn’t the fragile security situation in the state and elsewhere have dictated a more nuanced response particularly by an administration often accused of turning a blind eye to the atrocities perpetrated by the herdsmen?
And why should the activities of one particular occupational group continue to threaten the collective peace of the society?
Now it is said that nature abhors vacuum. Last week, we saw more than the typical vacuum associated with absentee governance. In Ibarapa Division of Oyo State, that is, we witnessed what most Nigerians probably feared most: an open clash between constitutional order and a militia in which the former, even with all its pretences to constitutional authority, couldn’t even guaranteed to win!
It took the antics of the self-styled Yoruba activist to jar us out of our reverie about constitutional governance still existing in any real sense here. Two Fridays back, the activist had stormed the Ibarapa area of Oyo State to serve a seven-day ‘quit notice’ on alleged kidnappers and criminals terrorising the axis. Prime target was the Seriki Fulani of Oyo State, Alhaji Saliu Abdulkadir, whom he accused of complicity in several reported cases of kidnaping for ransom in the axis. Not for him the niceties of the law and due process; the police and the court system. The Seriki, he decreed, just has to leave town!
Poor Governor Seyi Makinde; unlike the “Constituted Authority” that once bestrode the state – he could only rail and wail! “No one”, he had said of the ultimatum, “had any right whatsoever to order any Nigerian out of the state”!
That ultimatum expired Friday. And guess what, the man not only made good his threat, it was for him a triumphant rally of youths who sang and danced before their train moved to Igangan Town Hall where he addressed them.
“The criminals”, he had pronounced, “had fled the community”. “Non-Yoruba”, he also let it be known, “are welcome in Yorubaland but that anyone involved in kidnapping and other crimes would no longer be accommodated in the land”.
And in a tone of finality he proclaimed: “They have gone. We have sent them out of our land and they cannot come back again.
For the executive governor that had sworn that the eviction order would not take place, it was a case of formal power residing in Agodi, the seat of government, while the real power had shifted to the streets!
Beaten, the Chief Security Officer could only restate the instruction to the new Police Commissioner Ngozi Onadeko: “Arrest and treat like common criminals those fuelling ethnic tension and fanning the embers of crisis in the state”!
In a country where moral equivalences are never in short supply; and where duplicity has since become a directing principle of state policy, don’t ask me whether or not the latest order – which in any case, is no different from the earlier one – will ever be carried out!
Between the triumvirate of an, effete, ineffectual presidency, a governor unafraid to tread where angels tread, and a militia leader consumed by a messianic even if opportunistic streak; the much that could be said for now is that interesting times lie ahead. However, the forces that have been unleashed are such that the country would not remain the same again.
