Category: Festus Eriye

By Festus Eriye

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has begun life as chief executive of Nigeria’s most prosperous state with comforting surefootedness. If morning shows the day, then there are plenty of reasons for Lagosians to be hopeful that this unruly, sprawling city can somehow be made liveable.

On his first day at work, while some were taking new wives and sacking democratically elected local government chairmen like military despots, he signed an Executive Order outlining the six major areas on which his administration would focus.

Under the acronym ‘THEMES’, he outlined a plan of action that put the challenge of tackling traffic and environmental problems up top. Lagos, to put it mildly, is a very dirty city that urgently needs a clean-up.

It is also notorious for its gridlock. Not much has changed since Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang about the infamous traffic jam at Ojuelegba in the 70s. From decade to decade since then, administrations have come and gone with the confusion being replicated in different areas of the city.

From Maza-Maza to Mile 2 to Kirkiri to Apapa, from Oshodi to Ikeja and Agege, from Mile 12 to Ikorodu, the hapless denizens of the city have come to accept that half their lives would be spent in some ‘Hold-up’ or ‘Go-slow’.

A terrible situation was made worse by the massive construction of the last two years of the Akinwumi Ambode administration, coupled with the government’s capitulation over enforcement of its own rules regulating the activities of commercial motorcyclists.

Today, travelling on most Lagos roads is a hellish experience where, if you manage to avoid crushing the ‘okada’ darting in front of you without warning, you are most likely to be careening into some crater that has been left unattended for ages.

To compound matters, there is the human aspect which no governor has been able to crack. On most of the city’s streets people are a law unto themselves. Very few obey basic rules. Driving against traffic is par the course on any given day. If you stop at the traffic light when it turns red, you are the crazy one! Lawlessness on the road has become cultural; it’s the way we roll in Lagos.

Another depressing angle is that those supposed to enforce the law, have become willing enablers of the madness. Traffic officers and other security agents encourage unruly commercial buses to clog up choke points, they turn a blind eye to offences especially where there is some financial benefit to them.

Indeed, for most of these officers the disorderliness is profitable. Unfortunately, they are the very ones expected to implement the governor’s call to orderliness! I can just imagine their enthusiastic embrace of the task!

It is nice to see the governor, putting traffic management, road improvement and environmental issues, at the top of his agenda. In the last few days I have noticed officers of the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA), policemen and soldiers moving traffic along at some of the most notorious problem spots.

However, while Sanwo-Olu’s efforts are commendable, my worry is about sustainability. How long will his zeal last? Lagos roads and road users need to be tamed. These are people used to a culture of impunity; many have come to believe that you can get away with murder – if not scot free, then at least for a fee.

They are not going to swiftly repent of their ways and methods just because the new governor waved an Executive Order under their noses. When no one is watching or present to enforce the rules, they quickly revert to type.

The governor and his team can build the best roads and bridges, if they don’t get the people to embrace a new culture on the road, nothing will change.

Sanwo-Olu has to project to a people who have become addicted to lawlessness that he would be unrelenting in enforcing the laws as they concern road use and the environment. He has had the seemingly obligatory photo-op arresting some danfo driver driving against traffic. Everyone’s done it: Babatunde Fashola nabbed an army colonel, Ambode bagged a commercial bus driver. He cannot stop there.

It would be a bitter disappointment if the promising enthusiasm and zeal of these early days is allowed to dissipate – returning us to the chaotic and ungovernable Lagos we have become used to, and resigned to as our lot.

• This article was first published in The Nation on June 9, 2019.

By Festus Eriye

The right way of dealing with the troubling rise of secessionist sentiment in the land is to downplay but not dismiss them.

That was the tack taken by Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, in response to the declaration by one-time Niger Delta militant leader, Asari Dokubo, of a so-called ‘Biafra Customary Government.’ He dismissed him as an “entertainer” seeking attention.

If the retired militant was isolated comic relief, the graduation of Yoruba nationalist Sunday Igboho from hounding criminal herders to advocating the birth of an independent nation in the Southwest, darkened the mood.

His comments produced a fighting response from military top brass who promised to go after the separatists very soon. I would suggest the military have bigger fish to fry in the insurgents in the Northeast and rampaging bandits in the Northwest.

We can begin to worry, however, if separatist talk is embraced by mainstream political actors. That isn’t happening. We have seen prominent politicians and traditional rulers in the Southwest firmly distancing their people from any secessionist agenda.

I doubt any rational person would say north, south, east or west, there’s serious desire by Nigerians to part ways. No one has produced polling that suggests secession is a priority for our people; not even those pushing the agenda. They just want us to trust them that a break-up is in our best interests.

Until now, the Southeast was the region with the largest appetite for separation. That is understandable given its history with the Biafra secessionist bid. That sentiment has sustained the likes of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) through the years.

In the Southwest, calls for separation have been lukewarm in the past. The most vocal have favoured some form of regional autonomy at best – believing it was the surest way of replicating the glory days of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

Many in the Southeast have looked at the Southwest with envy – seeing as the region produced an Olusegun Obasanjo who after a stint as military Head of State went on to serve another eight years as civilian president. The feeling it had done well politically deepened with Yemi Osinbajo’s emergence as Vice President.

Despite occupying these prestigious offices, there’s a lingering sense that the region hasn’t benefitted much and is not in better shape than those who cry marginalisation all the time.

Many are angry that the Federal Government hasn’t done more to address violation of their land by criminal herders. That deep sense of frustration is what Igboho fed into and is driving him to the more ambitious agenda of declaring a ‘Yoruba Nation.’

In a trending a video Ighoho made an impassioned appeal to the United Nations and the international community to “come and separate us.”

If you needed any evidence that his talk was just that – talk – it was in that demand. He may have become a vent for airing regional frustration, but his utterances expose the extent which he can be taken seriously.

Those who keep calling on outside forces to come and prise us apart, don’t grasp how things work. If Igboho doesn’t understand the UN isn’t in the business of creating or breaking up countries, what would he do with a country if he was handed one?

Agitators and their fans must realise that breaking Nigeria into little pieces is no guarantee we’ll live happily ever after. The South Sudan story is a cautionary tale for adventurers.

After long years fighting to break away from Sudan, it got its independence wishes in 2011. But the newly-liberated nation was soon plunged into a civil war two years later as its diverse groups set upon each other.

Between 2013 and 2018 that conflict resulted in the death of nearly 400,000 people, with 2.24 million of its 12 million population becoming refugees and asylum seekers.

I wrote in an earlier piece titled “‘Nexit’ and the illusion of an ethnic paradise”: “In the end it isn’t just about freedom and a sense of identity. Nations and their governments have a responsibility to provide their people with a decent life. Can we honestly say that these envisaged states that may emerge from our collective shipwreck would offer us and our children a better deal than what imperfect Nigeria currently does?

“There are many countries that exist as independent states, yet have failed in their responsibility of providing for the wellbeing of their people. The result are the overloaded boats of the desperate making the deadly dash from Libya to Italy only to perish in the Mediterranean Sea.

“Getting your own ethnic enclave is no guarantee that your people would get their dream of the good life. Speaking the same language is no guarantee of love, peace, unity or equity. In every region of this country people from the same ethnic stock are slaughtering themselves in communal clashes.

“Truth be told, no matter how far we go, neither Biafra nor a future Niger Delta Republic (or an Oduduwa Republic) would be heaven on earth. In anger, some of the haters of today’s Nigeria refer to it as hell or a zoo, I suspect that the ethnic enclave they are preparing for their people may not be marginally better. A jungle perhaps?”

So far, the North is the region where you find the least desire for secession. That would suggest it is relatively satisfied with its lot, or has benefitted more from existing political arrangements and sees no need to fix a ‘good thing.’

But in the face of an insecurity crisis that has ravaged the region, its leading lights are increasingly reconciling themselves to the fact that existing structures can no longer deal with today’s challenges.

For instance, there was a time when leading opponents of the state police idea were from the region. They did so mainly for political reasons. Today, with bandits overrunning their communities, erstwhile rejectionists are becoming ardent advocates of devolution of the policing function.

Similar movement is needed in other areas to deal with the frustration producing the secession rhetoric. Mainstream actors need to seize the initiative and do something positive with feedback the likes of Igboho are generating.

Unless something is done urgently to reform and restructure this dysfunctional federation, what appears impracticable and unthinkable today may just happen to us tomorrow.

By Festus Eriye

Nigeria is in dire straits and that’s stating the obvious. On virtually all fronts the nation needs rescue. The insurgency in the Northeast, the activities of bandits and other malcontents in the Northwest, and kidnappers right across the country, has created an unprecedented crisis of insecurity.

On the economic front it is equally gloomy. A sluggish recovery has been thrown off kilter by the COVID-19 pandemic which has resulted in company closures and massive job losses. Unstable oil prices have put pressure on foreign reserves, draining confidence in the naira. Today, it is exchanging at over N400 to the dollar and continuing to trend south.

Compounding the miserable picture is escalating ethnic tension largely driven by inability of the authorities to deal with recurring farmers-herders conflict. Today, we have a slow-burn conflict waiting for some lunatic to sprinkle petrol on it.

In a desperate move, Buhari recently ordered that anyone found illegally wielding AK-47 rifles be shot on sight. The directive has ignited a debate as to whether he has the powers to order the extra-judicial execution of any criminal – no matter how grievous their offence might be.

The extreme nature of this directive paints a picture of desperation in government circles to bring a measure of stability to the embarrassing security situation. But at best it’s just a reactive move which doesn’t address the underlying conditions causing banditry and kidnapping to thrive.

What is driving young men into the wilds? Absence of opportunity pure and simple. There are very few jobs and crime has become the quickest way to a life of comfort for many who would ordinarily be spending their days in grinding poverty.

In the north the recourse is to the gun and violent action, down South an army of young people have become adept at perpetrating internet and other financial frauds. The more the EFCC and other security agencies apprehend them, the more they multiply like germ culture.

This isn’t sustainable on any level. Law and order as well as strong arm tactics like shooting bandits can only be short term measures. We desperately need ideas that would address root causes, make violent crime less attractive, while offering viable alternatives to those who are tempted.

But no matter how brilliant these ideas are they are worthless if you can’t get into government to implement them. This point was driven home by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his colleagues in the Labour Party prior to leading them to power in 1997.

Before then, the party were serial losers whose extreme leftist policies didn’t connect with the mass of the people who preferred something more centrist. Blair hammered home the message that the brightest ideas were useless if Labour remained in the opposition doldrums.

Buhari’s administration is winding down and the air is already thick with the manoeuvring and intriguing towards the next general elections. It would be expecting too much to think he’s going to solve all our existing challenges in the time left.

So those who are already dreaming of sitting in his seat in two years should actually be outlining what they would do differently with the power they seek.

What we are seeing emerging is the same pattern of tendencies organising themselves within and without major parties to seize power for power sake.

It is playing out in APC where every dodge is being deployed. The ongoing registration and revalidation exercise isn’t just some innocuous measure to revitalise an organisation; it’s a useful tool in some people’s grand plan to corner power.

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The struggle is equally playing out in the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where the calculus revolves around geography and ethnicity. This factor is also driving the scheming in the ruling party.

People often say issues don’t count in Nigerian politics, only personality and ethnicity. That may be true to some extent, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. In 2015, Jonathan, a southerner ran against Buhari, a northerner.

The ethnic undercurrent was quite strong as the north was electrified by the fact that their son was running, and they voted for him with a vengeance on Election Day. There were tales of northern politicians in PDP working against their party and voting for Buhari. There were interesting instances of someone running for a lesser office on another party’s platform hitching themselves to the bandwagon by placing the president’s photograph on their campaign poster!

So, ethnicity is always a strong factor. But 2015 was also about issues. Many who voted against Buhari from north to south did so based on the perception that Jonathan couldn’t handle the challenges of insecurity and the economy. His administration, painted as corruption-ridden, was contrasted with ‘Mai Gaskiya’s’ looming dispensation. The opposition successfully defined the former president as “clueless.”

Four years later, it was two northerners – Atiku Abubakar and Buhari – going toe to toe. Ethnicity was no longer such an emotional thing. Head or tail the region won. So, for the opposition to have any chance of capturing power, they had to do so on the basis of issues.

Many say PDP did a poor job on that front – against a government campaigning on a record of modest accomplishments. They also had a flawed candidate in the former Vice President.

Come 2023, the best way to guarantee that the elections are about the troubling issues confronting Nigeria, is to ensure that candidates of the leading parties emerge from the same zone. Given the existing zoning arrangements, after eight years of Buhari there should be no argument about power rotating to the south. But then politicians are not famous for keeping promises.

The same argument can be made for the PDP that, in the national interest, after eight years rule by a northerner – albeit from another party – the next candidate should be from the south.

An even more compelling reason for this national consensus for parties to zone to the same region, is the rising level of ethnic tensions. A presidential contest with this age-long ethnic rivalry in the background can only deepen the unprecedented levels of hate in the land.

Buhari came to power offering to resolve the issues of insecurity, economy and corruption. Six years on he’s still fire-fighting. On every one of those fronts we need an intense national examination of what the major parties and their candidates are offering as solutions for a nation searching for the way forward.

By Festus Eriye

Is it more beneficial to remain one country, patiently working out the kinks in our relationship as we go along? Given our natural endowments and the market advantages a massive population brings, you would think the answer is obvious.

But at a time when government officials, colourful clerics and an even more outlandish cast of lone rangers are normalising the abnormal, the jury is out.

All it takes to save a troubled marriage is honesty and open communication. It requires effort, but not as much as what goes into sustaining a messy break-up. Unfortunately, the ethnic mob always assumes there’s an Eldorado at the end of their tribal rainbow.

The longer the fallout from the herders-farmers crisis lasts, the more hotheads are being seduced by separatist rhetoric.

Even those who should know better are getting sucked in because of ethnic identification. One major newspaper has for weeks been publishing sensational editorials, headlines and photographs clearly designed to stir up emotion over the ‘sufferings’ of their kith and kin in the south.

Beyond bragging rights over who has more hair on their chest, I’m not certain what their endgame is.

Protest is legitimate and groups – ethnic, economic or sociocultural – are within their rights to pursue their agendas within lawful and reasonable limits.

Increasingly, however, we are going off the rails of the reasonable. It’s as if 41 years after the civil war ended with then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, declaring there was “no victor and no vanquished,” many wish there was a different outcome.

That’s why every heated discussion or communal clash instantly triggers talk of break-up or war. After all the angry exchanges that followed the incidents in Ondo and Oyo States, a consensus was forming – especially within the ranks of governors – that the way forward was to remove the outmoded pastoral practices that are at the root of recent conflicts. Indeed, it things appeared to be calming down.

That was until a dramatic twist was introduced by a so-called Amalgamated Union of Foodstuffs and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria, which stopped food supplies to markets in southern Nigeria ostensibly because of the treatment of herders.

On their slate of grievances directed at the Federal Government was a demand for compensation in the sum of N475 billion for members of their association allegedly killed during the #EndSARS protests and Shasha market clashes.

An ultimatum was issued to government but the brains behind the action showed reprisal was their real motivation when youths began blocking truckloads of food at Jebba, Niger State. The incident forced the military to intervene to clear the way for free flow of traffic.

The traders say their chairman has been arrested by agents of the Department of State Services (DSS) for his role in the ‘blockade.’

On social media we’ve been regaled with viral videos of trucks laden with onions, tomatoes and assorted food items allegedly headed for markets anew in Cameroun, Ghana, Burkina Faso and elsewhere.

As far as hare-brained schemes go, this one takes the prize. A food blockade isn’t some trivial thing; it is actually an act of war. Attempting to ‘starve’ a section of the country in a bid to exact vengeance, or force government to accede to your demands is a hostile act.

It should have produced an even stronger rebuke from the Presidency than what was put out after Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, ordered herders illegally occupying forest reserves to vacate them. So far we’ve not heard the sort of high profile repudiation the action deserves.

Whatever those who came up with this so-called blockade were hoping to achieve, it was not well thought out. It’s the classic example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

It is based on false assumptions. The traders assume they are the only source of food for their targets. But long before north and south were fused into one country, long before trade became a sustained pattern of interaction between these two parts, local communities had been feeding themselves for generations. They won’t just lie down helpless because some sellers quit on them.

One reason northern farmers push their goods south is because their own local markets aren’t enough to absorb what they produce and make their enterprises viable. There are huge markets in the south that sustain the prosperity of the agricultural sector up north. It’s a case of mutual dependence and no one is doing the other any favours.

A knee jerk search for new markets is just about venting anger; it’s not rational. In the end, economics doesn’t really respond to emotions. How big are these alternative markets in Niger, Ghana, Cameroon or Mali? Don’t they already have suppliers? The armada enthusiastically heading their way from Nigeria can only result in a glut and crash in prices.

But for the spat over herders were the traders planning a foray into these new territories as a strategic imperative? You bet they were not!

Much of what they produce is perishable and failure to dispose of them quickly brings catastrophic financial losses – exposing the huffing and puffing about ‘blockades’ for what it is: empty posturing.

Who abandons a place where he’s king in a fit of rage and heads off to eke out market share in a strange land?

Worse still, nature abhors a vacuum. Sooner or later the space left by the protesting traders would be filled by other entrepreneurs who will spot the opportunity.

The more you examine the demands of the traders, the more it is exposed as a slate of mischief. Among other things they claim to have lost so many members to the #EndSARS protest. That event was notably an uprising against police brutality. How did it become overnight a scheme targeted at northern traders and herders? How come in the four months since no one ever mentioned their ‘losses’?

As for the demand for compensation, public funds are not confetti to be tossed around casually. If truly they have a case the courts are there for them to pursue their cause. No leader is going to succumb to their demands just because they pulled their food items from the markets.

Unfortunately, it is this sort of victim mentality that guarantees that ethnic tensions would regularly flare up in the country for the foreseeable future.

By Festus Eriye

Ethnic profiling is as unfair as it’s potentially deadly. In the hands of political manipulators it is a powerful trigger for conflicts that can tear communities apart. It deserves to be condemned unreservedly by all peace-loving people.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing the expression thrown around regularly by some Northern politicians and leaders to describe happening in states like Oyo and Ondo.

At the weekend the usually mild-mannered Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, bluntly blamed Southwest governors for the recent ethnic violence which erupted in the region and targeted people of Fulani extraction.

Speaking in an interview on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Hausa Service, he said: “The utterances of some governors in the Southwest region encouraged the indigenes who felt their leaders gave them license.”

Profiling is about generalisation and Lawan’s angry statement did exactly the same thing. Of the six governors from the zone, only Ondo’s Rotimi Akeredolu and Oyo’s Seyi Makinde made comments of note related to ethnic conflicts.

The former directed herders illegally occupying forest reserves to vacate them because of reports of criminal activities.

From the very moment Sunday Igboho issued his controversial quit notice asking herdsmen to leave Ibarapa area in Oyo State, Makinde confronted him, arguing he had no authority to give such an order. He went a step further by asking the police to arrest anyone who took the laws into their own hands.

So aggressive was he in countering Igboho’s actions that he became the butt of criticism on social media, with many deriding him as a Fulani apologist.

Amidst the tension, I don’t recall any statement by the likes of Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos), Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Dapo Abiodun (Osun) or Gboyega Oyetola (Osun), egging people to violence.

It is equally noteworthy that at the height of the Shasha market crisis in Ibadan, four northern governors on a fact-finding visit declared the clashes were not about religion or ethnicity, but revolved round a leadership tussle in the facility.

There have also been reports of how Yorubas shielded Hausas and vice versa during the conflict.

So Lawan and the like frothing at the gills over so-called profiling looks more like blackmail and an attempt to divert attention from the real issues. We must not allow that.

Is there anger against killer herdsmen across the south? Yes. Does that mean all Fulani are criminal? Absolutely no.

If herders have been behaving like angels across the country, they would be profiled as angels. But a consistent pattern of violent conduct by a strain in their community has produced a stink which unfortunately is trailing the larger whole. That has to be addressed rather than the hollow blackmail about profiling.

Perhaps we are seeing this deliberate attempt by the elite to muddy the waters because they own the cattle; herders are just errand boys who tend the expensive merchandise. So when communities begin to rise up in ways that prevent them from carrying on business as usual resistance should be expected.

Through the ages land has been at the heart of terrible disputes. Today, with desert encroachment and exploding populations, that commodity isn’t enough to go round, and also accommodate a sentimental attachment to an outmoded way of carrying on pastoralism.

Trying to get the point across to some Northern leaders that people are only bothered about criminality and not the ethnicity of herders, is akin to a dialogue with the deaf.

Rather than appreciating the concerns of others, some have turned this into a political firefight operating from the wrong premises. Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, has become the vocal advocate of the right of herders to roam all territories from Timbuktu to Cape Town freely.

Somewhere in his mind, but certainly not based on the constitution, he has imagined that Nigerian forests are no-man’s territory; irrespective of our laws vesting control over lands in the states.

This week he got back up from one of his predecessors as governor, Isa Yuguda, who not only doubled down of Mohammed advocacy for herders to carry AK47s, he argued the country had been unfair to them because they provide beef daily for Nigerians. He reminds us that in colonial times pastoralists were a major source of government revenue.

This position creates a sense of Fulani exceptionalism that isn’t supported by facts or reality. We can also ask whether Nigeria has been fair to millions of Niger Deltans from whose soil billions of dollars’ worth of oil has been pumped. In return all they get are polluted farmlands and fishing ponds.

Under the military, agitators were brutally crushed fighting for a better deal from the state in places like Ogoniland.

When the likes of Yuguda speak of Nigeria being unfair to herders who does he blame? For the vast majority of our 61 years as an independent nation northerners have been at the helm of affairs. What stopped those leaders from taking steps to correct the “unfair treatment”?

To be fair, the position of Yuguda and Mohammed are not representative of the Northern political class. There are many others who have come out to say open grazing is not sustainable in the 21st century. Some who are governors are taking steps to provide alternatives.

The buck passers have also tried to pin the violent acts on supposedly foreign Fulani. The irony that they are also engaged in some form of profiling is probably lost on them. Can it really be true that all herders from outside our borders are criminals and their Nigerian counterparts’ angels?

Remember that the closest the ordinary man in rural areas comes to seeing a Fulani is through herdsman. He has no way of telling who is from Mali or Kano.

This issue goes beyond whether herders are local or foreign, whether they carry AK47s or rocket launchers. For as long as the only model for doing cattle business is roaming thousands of miles in search of grazing, there would be conflict.

For as long as people have a mind-set that promotes their ‘rights’ over those of other citizens, there would be clashes and plenty of raw material for lazy ethnic profiling. We really don’t want that, do we?

By Festus Eriye

Three statements by prominent Nigerians in the past one week show how we live in parallel universes, defined by social or political positions, geography or our ethnicity. We may deny it, but our utterances soon show us up.

For many up north, especially among the cattle-owning and rearing Fulani, the raging brouhaha about farmers-herders conflict is simply a case of selfish and insensitive people conspiring to frustrate their business.

Spokesmen of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) have repeated provocations that forests wherever they are found are God’s gift to them and they are free to roam freely – not minding whose property is trampled in their path.

When people complain about herders going about with AK47 rifles we get mindboggling rationalisations like the sort offered by Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, who argues they carry guns to protect themselves from bandits and cattle rustlers.

Mohammed has since tried to walk back those statements somewhat in the face of criticism from all sides. His Benue State colleague Samuel Ortom, for instance, sought to know what law permits herders to go about carrying assault rifles.

There’s national consensus that governments at all levels have failed to protect Nigerians and that failure doesn’t affect Fulani herdsmen only. Should we all then resort to carrying firearms because the police and military can’t shield us from rampaging bandits and kidnappers?

Many are furious at the perceived profiling of their entire group. While it is never right to tar everyone with the same brush, perhaps the offended should put themselves in the shoes of victims for one minute.

Imagine how a hapless villager feels when he is suddenly confronted with an armed herder whose animals have just damaged a farm he spent months cultivating? Will he jump for joy? He may be angry but too terrified to protest because of the gun he’s staring at. Imagine his frustration and impotence in the face of a destroyer who shows no remorse but rather carries on with a sense of entitlement!

Several days ago, women in rural parts of Edo State took to the streets in protest over not being able to go to their farms, for fear of being raped or killed. These are real life testimonies of victims; they are not the words of people suborned into some grand conspiracy to tarnish the image of an entire ethnic group.

Amidst heightened anxiety over quit notices issued to herders illegally grazing in forest reserves in Ondo State and the self-help initiative of Sunday Igboho in the Ibarapa area of Oyo State, petrol was literally poured afresh on the simmering fire as Hausa and Yoruba traders went toe-to-toe in a seemingly unrelated clash in the Shasha market in Ibadan.

By all accounts what began as a nothing incident between two individuals quickly snowballed into a battle in which antagonists mustered along ethnic lines.

Such was the potential for the Shasha incident degenerating into something worse, that a delegation of firefighting Northern governors raced to Ibadan to confer with Governor Seyi Makinde.

The Presidency weighed in with another of those statements filled with generalised condemnations of criminality and assurances of coming governmental actions that do anything but assure.

Indeed, this latest statement by presidential spokesman Shehu Garba seemed more devoted to defending President Muhammadu Buhari from charges that his attachment to his ethnic group wouldn’t let take the actions necessary to deal with the problem.

Many are especially angry over the perception herdsmen fingered in crimes across the country are hardly ever brought to justice. It was an allegation Shehu was eager to dispel by claiming that numerous such cases were under prosecution. He then passed the buck to the police to back up his assertion with further details.

His statement would have been more impactful if it was backed by raw data as to who was being tried where. As it turned out a claim without facts simply rang hollow.

Nigeria is on edge and stronger stuff is needed to deescalate tensions. Hate thrives in vacuums created by governmental inertia; it takes root when words are not backed up action.

The president may have spoken in times past to condemn criminality, but people are asking for him to go beyond politically-correct remarks. His spokesman says he’s not a showman; just expects relevant agencies to run on the basis of his past statements.

Nigerians are not asking him to put on some ‘Action President’ act. They are sending out desperate SOS cries for concrete action, for him to speak ‘personally’ and not from a distance through surrogates and subordinates. It’s not enough to simply tell us ‘I feel your pain.’

It is perhaps in that sense that Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, spoke when he challenged Buhari to make a strong statement on criminality as it concerns armed herders.

“If the president decides that he’s going to make any statement, what all of us will expect from Mr President clearly, is for him to at least come out and let Nigerians know, as we know, that he does not support criminality,” he said.

“The president has said before that if you find anybody with arms that are unlicensed, they should arrest them. That will be a wonderful statement again.”

I find it remarkable that this is coming from a governor and member of the president’s own ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and I read between the lines a sense of frustration that the president is not seen to be leading from the front initiatives to stamp out the fires.

For this, we should be grateful to the governors. They– northern and southern governors, have agreed to outlaw open grazing. This consensus should be backed by legislation at federal and state levels.

It has also been pointed out that most arms-carrying herders are foreigners whose crimes are quickly attributed to all Fulani pastoralists. That may be the case.

So what specifically is being done to address this? Do our armed forces, overstretched between containing insurgency in the Northeast and banditry in the Northwest, have the capacity to stop these herders turned security risk from crossing our porous northern borders easily?

The current security challenges are very dangerous, with unpredictable consequences if not firmly dealt with. Whatever is done now would just be a palliative, only structural and constitutional measures can deliver permanent solutions. Can Buhari take that critical leadership step in this direction?

By Festus Eriye

Last weekend President Muhammadu Buhari let out a plaintive cry. The Nigerian elite, he said, were harassing his government, refusing to acknowledge what had been achieved in his time in office.

If I were Nigeria’s president at this time, I, too, would feel harassed. An unscripted pandemic has dealt a devastating blow to an economy that was making its way gingerly to a modest recovery.

Buhari just appointed new heads for the armed forces – an acknowledgement that former service chiefs had failed to stem security challenges that have paralysed the country north, south, east and west.

The Boko Haram insurgency on its own was enough for the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) to successfully paint former President Goodluck Jonathan as clueless in 2015 – clearing a path for his defeat at the ballot box.

Today, that insurgency remains a primary national security headache – a reality confirmed when shortly after their inauguration, the new military chiefs headed straight to Borno State – epicentre of the conflict. The symbolism was obvious because they didn’t head for Zamfara, Kaduna or Katsina States which have also been under the hammer of rampaging bandits.

Across the country kidnapping has reached epidemic proportions with no state left unscathed. There was a time when violent armed robbery was considered a major problem, not any more. A new generation of criminals have embraced this other activity because of its huge financial returns.

On top of all these, ethnic tensions are boiling over. At the centre of it all are herdsmen who for as long as anyone can remember have roamed the country grazing their cattle. Even as a little boy I recall coming across the harmless looking herders who usually only had a stick slung languidly across their shoulders.

These days, a new generation ply their trade caressing AK47 rifles to ward off threats. Over the years the damage done to farmlands as they traversed the land became a flashpoint. Now, they are regularly accused of being involved in the booming kidnapping business.

It’s hard to dismiss this as lazy ethnic profiling because of testimonies of countless victims on the Abuja-Kaduna Expressway and other parts of the country as to the ethnicity of their captors. So, where there was a problem between farmers and herders, it is now compounded by criminality.

Unfortunately, despite mounting evidence and public outcry in many states, official response has never adequately addressed the problem. Matters came to a head recently when Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, ordered herders who were illegally occupying forest reserves to quit. His order would be spun by those desirous of promoting a sense of victimhood to mean an ethnic group was being expelled from a part of the country.

Following closely on the heels of the Ondo order was the phenomenon called Sunday Igboho who embarked on a personal crusade against those identified as criminal herders accused of rape, kidnapping and murder in the Ibarapa area of Oyo State.

His actions led to the flight of the Sarkin Fulani of that community, Alhaji Saliu Abdulkadir, accused of being complicit in the illegal activities. As I argued last week, fairness demands these claims are investigated to establish their veracity.

A raging debate about self-help has been ignited by Igboho’s move which has triggered copycat action by the so-called Eastern Security Network of the Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB). This group has also taken it upon itself to enforce a ban on open grazing imposed by the governors of the zone.

The response to all these activities has been predictable. Federal and state governors have been quick to condemn individuals taking laws into their own hands – warning of the implications for peaceful coexistence. Certain individuals and organisations in the north have equally raised the spectre of war and retaliation.

Amidst the rising passions it is not surprising that many have succumbed to sentiment, refusing to address the issues at stake in an honest and unbiased way. For instance, to suggest that what is happening is just a blind attack on the Fulani nation is unhelpful.

No sane person who has a sense of history would want to embark on the path of ethnic cleansing, knowing what havoc that has done in countries across the world and the legal consequences for champions of such activity.

There are Fulani who are professors, doctors, administrators etc and the vast majority are law-abiding. The cattle business is only a part of their identity; it’s not wholly representative of who they are.

This is not about their constitutional right to live where they like and make a living within Nigeria. However, it would foolhardy to pretend that bad apples within their midst are not making it easy for some to lazily stigmatise the ethnic group.

At the heart of current tensions is how to enable them carry on their business activities without doing harm to host communities who are mostly agrarian. It is about bringing to heel those amongst them who have veered into criminality. Take away those triggers and the current heat would evaporate.

In this wise, the recent proposal by Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, calling for a ban on the movement of cattle from north to south as is currently done, deserves serious consideration. States that are interested in the RUGA concept and grazing reserves should be encouraged to do so in order to remove the friction points.

Unfortunately, groups like the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and rabble-rousers like a certain Professor Umar Labdo are doing their level best to spin this as an attack on Fulani existential and constitutional rights.

It is unfortunate that such individuals and associations are only keen to defend their group rights without showing consideration to how the exercise of such rights limit the ability of other Nigerians to enjoy theirs. There’s hardly a word of condemnation for the criminal actions of some in their midst, rather an arrogant assertion of their rights.

It is sad that the NEF rather than seeking to calm tensions would suggest in their statement yesterday that northern state governors should be making arrangements to receive their kinsmen ‘forcefully ejected’ out of certain states in the south.

Unfortunately, we have seen over time how these groups and individuals seek to remain relevant through excitable utterances, without weighing the wider implications of their words.