When I wrote here last week that Nigeria will not see an end to her insecurity until influential Fulani leaders rein in their herdsmen, listed in the Global Terrorism Index as the fourth most dangerous terrorist group in the world, and their equally murderous foreign counterparts, both of them in search of grazing fields, something they cannot do, because Fulanis in the words of the Fulani Nationality Movement, (FUNAM) believe that “all over the world, Nigeria is the only country given to them by Allah”, I least expected that a few days later, some of these elements would bring home to us in Ekiti pain, tears and death, as they gunned down two of our reverred monarchs – the Onimojo of Imojo – Ekiti, Oba Olatunde Samuel Olusola and the Elesun of Esun – Ekiti, Oba David Babatunde Ogunsakin while a third, HRH, the Alara of Ara-Ikole Ekiti, Oba Adebayo Fatoba barely escaped.
In another attack, they seized some of our little school children over who they have already started to haggle, as if they were cartels.
No, it is not the first time they are trying to make a ‘Zamfara, Kaduna or Plateau’ of our dear state, but it had never been anything close to this gruesome blood-letting.
Severally, we have seen fully armed Fulanis turn the Oke – Ako neck of wood to their hunting ground.
Their identity is not in doubt, either, as 5 Fulanis have already been arrested in the forest nearby.
But how did we get here?
Put another way, when did the rain start to beat us?
This rain of iniquity, embedded in the double standard policy of treating a part of the country as untouchables while Fulani boys, even as little as between ages 16 and 17, are left, freely roaming the bush or the highways, armed to the teeth with AK47 rifles at a time officially licenced guns are being retrieved from their owners on “orders from above”.
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I saw this danger coming as far back as 2020 when, in two consecutive articles on these pages, namely:
“Waves and Waves of Northerners Rushing South – What is A Presidential Order Now Worth” (17th May, 2020) and “Still on The Massive Exodus Southwards of Northerners – Where Are The Nigerian Security Agencies” dated 24th May, 2020, I drew attention to the devilish ethnic agenda handed over to the mob by the Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM) which read as follows:
“We urge the Northern youths to resist, by all means necessary, any attempt to send them back by Southern Governors. We see the actions of these Governors and their agents as provocative and a devious assault on free movement of persons contained in the Nigerian Constitution and the ECOWAS Protocol on movement of goods and persons”, as if free movement meant going to kill and devastate the land.
“We declare any State that refuses to allow Northern youths to Southern States as an enemy that we promise will be fought vigorously. We urge you, faithful men, not to cringe, not to fear, not to look back.
The battle is better fought on their homeland. We inform you that we your leaders hold meetings across the key Northern States of Sokoto, Bornu, Katsina, Kano, Yobe, Kebi, Bauchi and Kaduna. Our resolve is that Northern youths should move enmasse to Southern States.(to kill?). Relaunch the mass movement in ways they have never seen. Go in long convoys. If you are stopped, use all means, the bush path, the railways and all. If the towns and cities are hostile, hang out on the street corners, in uncompleted buildings, occupy the forests, pitch tents, make any where available as your abode, your rest places, your home. We urge you to be armed. The infidels may want to attack you. It will be disastrous to ever assume there will be no battle at all, before we regain the lost caliphate”.
Reading through that impeccable order, you would notice that like their old Kaduna Mafia forebears, these seeming ragtags always have their intelligentsia having their back.
You would also have ordinarily thought that the above was enough to have moved the then Buhari government to action to, at least, pull their leaders in for questioning.
But for where?
That was at a time when the entire Nigerian security architecture was deliberately put under a Northern choke hold by President Buhari himself.
Even today, they remain ever so arrogant that some two weeks ago, they announced the establishment of a “Nomad Vigilante Group” which they claim will assist security agencies in combatting criminal activities”.
Can anything be more daring, ludicrous and outrightly contemptuous of the Federal Government?
This leads me to what I believe is afoot, which is, that Nigeria is deliberately being made ungovernable by those who consider it infradig to be treated as the equal of Nigerians from other parts of the country.
This looks to me about the only rational way to explain the massive insecurity deluge, this insecurity pandemic that, has very suddenly descended on the country, starting from the North, and has now, comprehensively turned Abuja, the federal capital, to a no – go area for anybody who values his life or freedom.
That done , they have now turned their gaze to the Southwest, President Bola Tinubu’s geo – political zone, with Lagos and Ogun states – the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway way in particular, before zero-ing in on Ekiti.
They have, in the past two weeks, attacked Ekiti thrice, climaxing in the horrendous killing of the aforementioned Royal Fathers.
But these jokers lie, if they think Ekiti will ever lie low for killers. They, or their minders, should go and educate themselves on the history of the Ekiti people, with particular reference to the Yoruba wars of the 19th century. They will find the book: ‘Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century,’ by J. F. Ade Ajayi and Robert Smith, Cambridge University Press, quite useful.
With regards to the killing of our Obas, the time has come for Yoruba elders to begin to think back to what happened in the early 1800’s in Hausa land which culminated in Hausa people being where they are today.
From there, the elders should also begin to interrogate the reasonableness, or no, of our continuing to pay ransom which is used in buying more guns.
A npe gbon nile Yoruba ni o.
Truth be told, I believe that their target, for now, is President Bola Tinubu since they cannot stand a president who is his own man, and not a quisling, or a plaything of the North.
One of their groups has already indicated that in a WhatsApp post in which they threatened fire and brimstone.
The paradigm shift, on the Plateau, which eventuated a week ago must have confirmed to them that not only is a new sheriff in town, the era of ethnic cleansing by some gun men, anywhere in Nigeria, is fast coming to an end.
Newspaper reports this past week, have it that on the relaxation of the state of emergency in Plateau state, gunmen in the dozens had, as early as 7 am, Friday morning, launched an attack on communities along Gindiri Road, prompting an immediate response from the security forces.
In the entire 8 years of President Buhari, even as villagers were being killed in their hundreds – “as of July 7, 2023, the death toll from gun men attacks stood at 204 but, a week later, it had surged to 346, with over 20,000 displaced persons seeking refuge in camps” – not once, do I remember Nigerian security forces engaging the rampaging Fulani gunmen since there were no such orders from higher authorities.
At the end of the confrontation last week, 30 of the attackers were reported neutralised with another 50 arrested, while 4 soldiers were injured.
For once in many decades, indeed since 1994, the killers got a dose of their own medicine.
What Nigerians had become inured to all these years are cases of armed gun men, in their hundreds, using the cover of night to attack and kill in numbers,
forcefully, taking over other people’s lands to which owners can no longer return even after the cessation of hostilities, without a single one of them being arrested.
The Federal Government must follow this up by appropriately equipping the security forces with geo- mapping and eavesdropping equipments to enable them catch attackers at their planning stages.
I conclude with the following contribution to a WhatsApp discussion on the subject of insecurity in Nigeria:
“The permanent solution to insecurity in Nigeria is restructuring which will take some time to be fully achieved.
In the immediate, therefore, State Police should be created to combat insecurity”.
“In the Southwest, Amotekun should immediately be converted to a Forest Guards’ agency, whose members should be armed with firearms like the Katsina Vigilante group, with its mandate being to comb all our forests and eliminate all those who have no legitimate business being there in the first place”.
This should be replicated nationwide, as nothing short of a massive deployment along these lines can end insecurity in Nigeria”.