Tag: Benue killings

Whether the federal government knows it or not, and whether they accept it or not, the scale of the killings in Benue State and other parts of the country by suspected herdsmen now clearly constitutes a huge threat to national security. The government, however, seems torn between tackling this grave threat or allowing it to resolve itself one way or the other — and if not torn between the two emotions, then complicit. The killing, last Monday and Tuesday in five communities in Benue State, of about 20 people, marks a disturbing recrudescence of the bloodletting that is permanently scarring politics and ethnic relations in Nigeria. The Benue killings followed another killing spree last week where about 10 people, including a traditional ruler and his pregnant wife, lost their lives in Southern Kaduna. In both incidents, scores were injured. Indeed, in the past few years, the killings by suspected herdsmen claiming to revenge attacks against their people and cattle have not abated.

Alarmingly, Benue is fast becoming a tinderbox. In February, 2016 and for days, suspected herdsmen wreaked havoc unchecked on Agatu Local Government Area, killing some 300 people. Rather than be provoked into upholding the law and applying remedial measures, the government tamely claimed not to be able to substantiate a casualty figure they thought was unreasonably too high. But leaders of the umbrella association of herdsmen were not so similarly incommoded as to be unable to claim responsibility. Indeed the struggle between farmers and herdsmen, worsened by government dithering and unfavourable socio-economic climate, seems particularly fierce in Benue State. There have been no real and lasting initiative, not to talk of even analytical consensus, to help stanch the flow of blood in that state nor in other states where such deathly struggles have manifested. A general vacillation has inexorably followed the inability of the government, opinion leaders and traditional chiefs to reach a consensus on the genesis of the trouble, and the rights of farmers and herdsmen, especially where those rights begin and end.

Regarding the current spate of killings in Benue, it seems almost certain that after a few weeks, after the enunciation of the usual platitudes and condemnatory statements, the government will shift their short attention span to other matters. It is in fact deeply troubling that the scale of the barbarism on display in Benue State has not elicited a vigorous and vociferous response from the highest seat of government commensurate with the magnitude of the killings. Officials, including presidential aides, have of course issued statements condemning the killings and suing for peace and good neighbourliness, but the president himself has neither visited the massacre scenes nor offered the nation his opinion of what he really thinks are the triggers for the killings. This has led many commentators to fear that he is unsure where his loyalties lie. As Samuel Ortom, the Governor of Benue State, suggested when he visited the killing fields early in the week, it is perhaps time the president visited the blighted battlefields, empathise with and reassure the victims, and demonstrate his loyalty to the presidential oath he took.

The massacres have not been brought under control for a number of reasons. First, opinion leaders seem unable to appreciate the issues that predispose the herdsmen and farmers to the bloody clashes that have become a part of their recent history. From suggesting that the offending herdsmen are foreigners to claiming that the killings are justified on account of cattle killing and rustling, some Fulani opinion leaders have seemed to justify the massacres and laud the violent means of settling scores. Second, law enforcement agencies, when they are not accused of taking sides, have been unable to demonstrate the professionalism required to reassure both herdsmen and farmers that their grievances would be tackled firmly and with dispatch. It is for instance inexplicable that the police and other security agencies were in 2016 unable to arrest those who openly claimed the Agatu massacres were a reprisal against farmers who murdered Fulani leaders.

It is also troubling that in the recent killings, the police have seemed to avoid going after those who, in the words of Mr Ortom, claimed they would undermine the recently passed Benue State anti-open grazing law. Third, and very unfortunately, the presidency has not demonstrated its neutrality in those bloody struggles in the Middle Belt, nor shown depth and dispassion in appreciating the socio-economic underpinnings of the crisis. This has in turn led to the adumbration of insensitive and facile measures to solve the crisis, such as appropriating lands in nearly all parts of the country for herdsmen who are private businessmen.

What is clearly on display in the violent struggle between herdsmen and host farming communities is self-help. Since the government continues to dither and is unable to enunciate and implement lasting solutions, the aggrieved farmers and herdsmen, particularly the armed herdsmen, have taking it upon themselves to find a ‘living space’ for their groups, their farms, or their cattle. Until the government appreciates the deeper and wider dimensions of the struggle and killings, it may find it difficult to appreciate the urgency of the crisis and the huge threat it constitutes to national unity, peace and development.

The herdsmen-farmers crisis is now virtually prevalent nationwide. In some cases, whole communities are displaced, economic activities are grounded, while bitterness and a sense of hopelessness are gradually building to a tipping point. Together with a lot of other criminal activities, the herdsmen-farmers crisis has painted the country as one which is clearly unable to resolve its national question, and where a low-scale national insurgency, potentially more destructive than the Boko Haram war, is unleashing itself on the country and making many places dangerous and uninhabitable. Most analysts agree that if the crisis is not quickly checked with the altruism the situation demands, the country might begin to express itself in multiple and perhaps dissociated wars.

If President Muhammadu Buhari will not frontally, expertly and satisfactorily address this horrifying problem threatening to get out of hand, he may soon find the whole country engulfed. The national mood is decidedly against the herdsmen, regardless of whether they have justifiable reasons to be aggrieved or not. It need not be so. But it is so today because the government has unwisely let the problem fester. Its inexpert reading of the crisis, which has obfuscated the climatological underpinnings of the crisis and encouraged the government to ignore the dangers of sustaining an anachronistic traditional dairy farming, has prevented it from embracing the sensible solutions needed to restore peace and development. It has also robbed the government of the neutrality needed to persuade the people of its reliability as an arbiter. Sadly, because of this long irresoluteness, many people have begun to suspect the Buhari presidency of covertly promoting a nefarious agenda.

The military and the police are already overextended because the government incredibly thinks many of these crises must willy-nilly respond only to law and order solutions. They will not. It is time the government began to apply sensible and altruistic policies to tackle some of these problems. The Buhari presidency has a responsibility to demonstrate its altruism, show the people that the ethnic background of those in Aso Villa does not becloud their judgement, and demonstrate firmness and even-handedness in applying the stick and carrot to those who decide to take the law into their own hands, whether as a tool of offence or defence. The government must go beyond denouncing impunity; it must fiercely put impunity down.

The government must also appreciate the urgency of the task ahead. It must understand that the country is dangerously poised to conflagrate, and that indeed any of the ubiquitous farmers-herdsmen attacks could potentially be the tipping point. Should that happen, should the country explode into small wars without properly defined borders, the situation could easily become uncontrollable. Apart from the political consequences of that horrifying scenario, as may become evident in 2019, there is also the regional dimension, a dimension certain to complicate not only ethnic relations but also religious harmony. The elite, including the government over time, have behaved very ignorantly and irresponsibly. They have promoted bigotry, self-centredness, and ethnic and religious favouritism, not only at the national level but also at the state and local government levels. If someone does not rise up to stop the disgraceful and unflattering drift towards the precipice, the crises inundating the country could eventually prove too overwhelming.