By Festus Eriye
His name leapt out of nowhere, but he didn’t just materialise from thin air to acquire instant notoriety. Sunday Igboho, the Yoruba nationalist whose actions and utterances have stirred passions recently, has been flying under the radar – associating with key political players in the Southwest for a while.
But it was his intervention in the spate of kidnappings and killings in Ibarapa area of Oyo State that arrested national attention.
His call came on the heels of Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, telling herders who had illegally taken over the state’s forest reserves to leave within a week.
The governor’s directive drew an immediate reaction from President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, who called it ‘unconstitutional.’
As it turned out something got lost in translation because Akeredolu merely ordered herders out of an area restricted for preserving certain animal species and flora and fauna. His didn’t kick an ethnic group out of the state.
But a combination of his decree and Igboho’s private initiative soon had the usual suspects up north beating the drums of war.
In short order the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) declared that the Oyo strongman’s order could precipitate a war and called for his arrest. They were joined by a leading northern newspaper whose furious editorial warned Akeredolu and Igboho were “playing with fire.”
The temperature has cooled a bit with Monday’s summit in Akure of Southwest governors, their Kebbi and Jigawa counterparts as well as representatives of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN). Their communique called for an end to open grazing and reiterated the directive for herders to vacate the said forest reserves.
While this is a helpful intervention, all it does is douse tension for the moment. Trouble will flare up sooner or later because nothing fundamental has been done to address what’s at the root of the problem: the insistence of herders that their right to feed animals – even when that activity results in the violation and destruction of others people’s property – somehow supersedes every other right.
Even worse, it’s been established over and again that elements within the herders’ community have embraced kidnapping and other criminal activities – making them a terror to their host communities from the Middle-Belt to the Southeast and South-South zones of the country.
For instance, there are lurid allegations of abductions, rape and killings against Abdulkadir and his community. These should be investigated and prosecutions brought against those found culpable. That’s not too much to ask as a way of restoring peace and harmony to the community.
Unfortunately, whenever there’s a flare up of anger on the part of those whose farms and crops have been destroyed, whose wives have been raped and even killed, it’s narrowly framed as an attempt to impinge on an ethnic nationality’s right to earn a living. The question is at what cost?
Justice Adewale Thompson in a judgment on Suit No AB/26/66 delivered at the Abeokuta Division of the High Court on 17th April, 1969, had this to say about open grazing:
“I do not accept the contention of Defendants that a custom exists which imposes an obligation on the owner of farm to fence his farm whilst the owner of cattle allows his cattle to wander like pests and cause damage. Such a custom if it exists, is unreasonable and I hold that it is repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience and therefore unenforceable…in that it is highly unreasonable to impose the burden of fencing a farm on the farmer without the corresponding obligation on the cattle owner to fence in his cattle.”
Sadly, the administration hasn’t reacted in ways that show it understands the frustrations of host communities. If anything, its utterances create the impression it’s more interested in fighting the corner of herders than in national cohesion.
When in 2018 there was another massive incident of bloodletting arising from clashes between farmers and herders in Benue State, many expected Buhari would show up in the state to express concern. He didn’t. He instead lectured a delegation that went to Aso Villa to discuss the killings to “go and accommodate your brothers.” The unstated implication being that a certain lack of generosity on the part of the hosts was the problem.
At a meeting in London with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, he assured that ‘enduring solutions’ were being worked out to stem the bloodletting.
It’s verging on three years since that promise was made. In that time the RUGA initiative has bitten the dust and not much else done to deal with the problem. Herders are still roaming free across the land.
In the face of their depredations, Nigerians are forced to listen to arrogant and provocative statements by the likes of National President of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Bello Abdullahi Bodejo.
“All the lands in this country belong to the Fulani, but we don’t have any business to do with land if it doesn’t have areas for grazing,” he declared in a recent newspaper interview.
“We don’t sell land, we don’t farm. What we consider is the areas that have cow food. If the place is good for grazing, we don’t need anybody’s permission to go there.”
With this mindset enabling the typical herder, he traverses the landscape oblivious to other people’s right. It’s the perfect trigger for conflict as people would rise to defend their ancestral lands and homes at some point.
It’s the job of government to ensure peaceful coexistence between different ethnic groups. But when state actors refuse to act promptly, they open doors for individuals to intervene with self-help.
The government doesn’t help matters when its own actions are easily rubbished as hypocritical and riddled with double standards. The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, was tripping over himself to arrest Igboho for supposedly inflammatory talk; he wasn’t so zealous when a certain Prof. Isa Muhammed Maishanu of the Muslim Solidarity Forum issued a quit notice ordering Catholic Archbishop Matthew Kukah to leave Sokoto just because he criticised Buhari.
You can arrest a thousand Igbohos; it won’t change anything until you arrive at a solution that acknowledges that this is the 21st century and cattle business cannot be conducted as it was in the 19th century. It must be a solution that enables breeders do their business without destroying the properties of host communities, or terrorising same with an even more lucrative stream of income – kidnapping.
Leave a Reply