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Ekweremadu: Enugu herdsmen’s attack‘ll be Nigeria’s last

Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu yesterday said the recent attack on Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State by suspected Fulani herdsmen will be the last of such attacks in any part of then country.

Ekweremadu, who led other members of the National Assembly from Enugu State to the area, described the damage done to the community as devastating.

Announcing a donation of a transformer to the community, the senator assured that “this will bring an end to what herdsmen are doing”.

He also announced a donation of N2 million to rebuild the two churches the herdsmen allegedly torched during the attack.

Ekweremadu visited the National Orthopaedic Hospital in Enugu, where some of the injured were receiving treatment.

The senator expressed shock over the casualties recorded during the attack.

He said: “This will bring an end to what herdsmen are doing in Nigeria. We shall do our best to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, whether here or elsewhere.

“NEMA (the National Emergency Management Agency) will also visit here tomorrow (Monday) with materials. In the meantime, the National Assembly caucus in our state is donating N2 million to help you start the rebuilding process.

“We are going to ensure that roads here are given clear attention. After four years, the story of Uzo-Uwani will change.

“I will also give you a transformer within the next three to four days.”

In their separate speeches, Patrick Asadu and Dennis Agbo, representing Nsukka/Igbo-Eze South and Igbo-Eze North/Udenu Federal constituencies, chorused the need to prevent a recurrence.

They noted that the attack on Nimbo would not be taken for granted.

“They have been doing this and going free, but this attack on Nimbo will be the last. The people doing this are not just cattle rearers; they are terrorists, Boko Haram elements. We are not going to take it,” Asadu said.

The parish priest of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Nimbo, Rev. Patrick Obetta, narrated how God saved him from the invaders.

The cleric told the delegation that 50 herdsmen invaded the church and vandalised it after several attempts to set it ablaze had failed.

The traditional ruler, Igwe John Akor, said his community had been having harrowing experiences in the hands of Fulani herdsmen for decades.

He said sad stories about Fulani herdsmen were regular in his domain.

He urged Ekweremadu and his team to curb the menace so that the residents would enjoy some peace.

May 2, 2016
Herdsmen and other hearse-men

The mood of the country is foul and nasty. There is an ugly distemper abroad. There are just too many deaths and suffering for one to be sanguine and optimistic. The promise of 2015, of national rebirth and regeneration, now appears gravelly imperilled.

The enemy is within. As usual,we do not need to look very far. The deadly virus is locally sourced. Between the herdsmen and the hearse-men, the national obsequies are loud and clear. The person who wants to die has met the person who wants to kill. Anarchy looms.

Call them the horsemen or outriders of the imminent apocalypse, and you will not be wrong. The crude motorcade of national disintegration is manned not just by homicidal herdsmen but also by the hearse-men of ethical impunity. Once again we ask, where are our surviving statesmen?

For General Buhari, it never rains but pours. All the major contradictions of the nation are coming to a boil at once, and what a riotous mix! This is beginning to look like the second political crucifixion of the same man—a rare historical occurrence. When he is not dealing with an ethically challenged senate, he is grappling witha morally diseased political elite running rings around him.

When he is not dealing with crippling fuel shortage and severe power outage, he is contending with state larceny on a scale that beggars belief. While the enemies of progress and the redoubt of retrogression rally with surprising ease and ferocity, the man from Daura is left clutching at judicial and executive straws even as the ruling party decomposes before our very eyes.

From now on and for the foreseeable future, all the determined enemies of the retired general need to do is simply to latch on to the unresolved menace of the maniacal cattle rearers and their own crimes and infractions against the nation pale into utter insignificance. Killing is after all more deadly than stealing.We are setting the stage for an exchange of prisoners.

The nation is squeezed to death between the murderous hordes of primitive herdsmen on the rampage and the rallying hearse-men of social and economic cannibalism feasting on its entrails while screaming blue murder. There is genocide and there is genocide. Cry, the unbeloved colonial contraption.

Let anybody perish the thought that this is by any stretch a mitigating plea for the herdsmen and the genocidal malice and venom with which they have hacked and shot their way through large swathes of the country both north and south leaving a trail of gore and mayhem in their wake. It is an appeal to focus our eyes on the ball so that we do not confuse the symptoms with the real malady.

There can be no excuse whatsoever be it cultural, social, historical or economic for the merciless bloodletting of this murderous group. Indeed, let it be stated right away that if General Buhari were to suffer a second political martyrdom, much of the blame will be placed at the doorstep of his stubborn fixations, his indiscretions and lack of a firm and resolute approach to a grave national security crisis.

The herdsmen menace has been with us for some time. It predates Buhari’s second ascendancy, but it seems to have gone worse with his second coming. As a dedicated cattle rearer himself and a notable scion of the nomadic worldview, he has had enough time to study the phenomenon and how its arcane ritual of untrammelled roaming is locked in fatal contradiction with the sacred dictates of the modern nation-state, particularly a multi-nation country.

This is why the much expected response of the government leaves much to be desired in its vacuity and vacant non-sequiturs. It is not enough after so many lives have been lost to order the security forces to crack down on the herdsmen. This is nothing but officialese at its most uninspired and uninspiring.

As many others have noted, what the nation expected was a well-reasoned intellectual template for confronting the menace and a militarily coordinated programme of action for bringing the tragedy to heel and the offenders swiftly to book. There was nothing like this; neither was there official solace and succour for the injured of the land. At the very least, the president ought to have addressed the nation.

Contrary to the dangerous bogey being fed to the nation, the herdsmen are not a new mutation of Boko Haram. There might have been an influx of arms and munitions from the Libyan debacle and the open corridor of the Maghreb through Mali. There might have been a militarization of herd-protection as a result of organized cattle rustling and organized resistance to free roaming as the logic of settled and sedentary culture violently collides with the logic of nomadic free passage.

But while Boko Haram is ideologically driven and principally targeted at the state, the herdsmen are culturally propelled; a regnant residue of ancient customs and nomadic shuttling which targets entire communities and their people.

Yet because it is ideologically driven, the Boko Haram scourge eventuatedin anarmed uprising against the statewhereas if left untreated, the cultural chauvinism of the herdsmen may eventuate in an armed collision with other people and communities leading to the possibility of genocide and ethnic vacuuming.

This looming Rwandanizationof Nigeria is a threat that cannot be taken lightly. There are two pressing reasons why violence-happy herdsmen constitute a threat to the survival of the nation even more than the Boko Haram. First unlike Boko Haram, the herdsmen, or their sedentary segments, are already firmly embedded in many communities from the north of the nation to the southernmost tip.

Second, nobody knows when an apocalyptic massacre of the host community will trigger a reprisal on a scale that will tip the entire country into ethnocidal mayhem and anarchy. The herdsmen may then be able to call upon the travelling Taliban and equal opportunity jihadists that might have infiltrated the country through its porous borders in a war of all against all.

Let it not be forgotten that there is a historical and spiritual factor in all this which unites both the Boko Haram and the herdsmen. Whether ideological or cultural, both groups are driven by contempt and disdain for the norms of the secular modern state which finds resonance in a primitive and pre-modern strain of Islam dominant in the northern part of the nation.

As we have seen with al-Qaeda and ISIS, this type of Islam has no truck with the modern nation-state which it believes is an imposition of western civilization. Yet it partakes of the gain of western civilization, particularly the western modernity imposed on the world through the Industrial Revolution and the onslaught of two waves of globalization.

While the northern master-class send their children to the best schools in the world and enjoy the luxury of the latest western consumer goods, the under-class are the herdsmen who are armed to roam the length and breadth of the nation tending their cattle. Who knows whether their current genocidal restiveness is a form of social rebellion?

Whereas the two other ethnic majorities in the country have largely transcended this feudal contradiction by cocking a snook at their old ruling classes, in the north the master class remains solid and impregnable, an ironic tribute to political wizardry and power of cohesion and organizational acumen.

But no one can stall or arrest the relentless march of history. The Boko Haram phenomenon has demystified the northern ruling class and made nonsense of their hallowed aura by deposing and assassinating the rulers at will. It will amount to double jeopardy if they were to allow the unruly herdsmen to put them in terminal contradictions with other sections of the country where they do not hold sway.

Hence once again, the historic centrality of General Buhari to the resolution of the Northern Question and Nigeria’s crisis of modernization. When the politically chaste and tactically fumbling general allowed BukolaSaraki to nick the senate presidency from his divided and disloyal party, this column noted that the retired general had committed the equivalent of a “self-coup”or what the Latin Americans call autogolpe which would haunt him for a long time and stymie his second coming. Recent events are bearing this out.

Once again, we must wager that if the retired general allows the herdsmen palaver to get out of hand, it will spell terminal doom for his presidency and the nation at large. As this column noted once, the historical providence behind a Buhari presidency at this point in time stems from the fact that he is the only one with the integrity, the mass appeal and the moral charisma to carry out the painful cultural, political and spiritual reform needed to bring the north at par with the dictates of a modern nation state.

If Buhari fails in this venture, there is every possibility that the nation will disappear or dissolve into a confederalist arrangement under the supervision of the international community. The idea of herdsmen roaming freely all over the country, particularly in areas where they are not domiciled, is a cultural anachronism which clashes with the precepts of a modernizing nation-state and can only be sustained by violence.

Cattle-rearing has since undergone several Copernican revolutions in other parts of the world that have transcended fetishes and primordial superstitions. In any case, there is not much economic value to the business except a fondness for a past that is divorced from pressing material reality.

Research has shown that cattle force-marched for thousands of miles through hostile and inhospitable territories would have lost much of their fat and muscles by the time they arrived at their destination. Despite the protective affection of their minders, they have become an example of man’s inhumanity to animals.

Despite its stupendous riches and promise, this country is hobbled by ethnic, religious, regional and cultural polarities at the horizontal level and by a sharp and accelerating division between the master class and the underclass at the vertical level. It is a miraculous wonder that it has survived so far.

The Nigerian political elite has shown that it lacks the visionary impetus to come up with core values binding all elite factions of the nation and the will to pursue a programme of shared wealth and integrative prosperity that leads to social harmony. Beyond fighting corruption, it is now imperative for the Buhari government to come up with a coherent programme about how to overcome these crippling divisions, starting with the menace of the murderous herdsmen.

May 1, 2016
Stop the herdsmen now

Herdsmen must think so highly of themselves as untouchables! If not, why should they behave as if the whole of the country is their grazing land and can therefore move into any community and exhibit what Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, last Thursday aptly described as “undisputed impunity”.

Long before the recent cases of their serial massacres across the country that have led to an outcry for the federal government to take necessary measures to curtail them, the herdsmen have always overrun various farmlands with their cows, destroying crops and killing whoever dared to challenge them.

Under the guise of reprisal for the killing of their cows, hundreds of persons have been killed as if the lives of their cows are more valuable than innocent victims of their attacks.

The genocide in the Agatu community was the height of the reign of terror of the herdsmen and as usual, the police found it difficult to stop them. Even when the community raised an alarm about the number of persons killed, it was dismissed as an exaggeration.

Not only did herdsman kill and destroy properties in the Agatu communities, they occupied some villages and prevented the indigenes from returning home.

They have since repeated same dastardly acts in Taraba, Nassarawa, Kogi and now Enugu where over 50 persons were gruesomely killed.

The first time I saw herdsmen in my village in Imagbon, Odogbolu Local Governemnt area of Ogun State, I was very worried and have been praying that my people back home don’t get the “herdsmen treatment” someday whenever they attempt to curtail the herdsmen’s usual excesses in disregard for their host communities.

Worse still, their nefarious activities are not limited to rural areas. In Lagos, there have been cases where cows take over main roads, resulting sometimes in vehicles being damaged. On express roads, there have been accidents caused by cows that get in the path of speeding vehicles.

The audacity usually exhibited by the herdsmen, who are now reported to carry sophisticated guns, instead of sticks, is such that have left Nigerians wondering if they are above the law and can’t be treated as criminals which they are.

For too long, the excesses of the herdsmen have been tolerated and it is time they were stopped before they plunge the country into another major crisis. If communities are gracious enough to allow them to graze their cattle on their land, the herdsmen must know their bounds and not claim rights they don’t have.

If only in the past, herdsmen have been arrested and punished for offences committed, then they would not have continued to carry on as if they are above the law.

Deliberately, I didn’t call the herdsmen Fulanis as not all of them may be like the northern governors argued on Friday. Whoever they are and wherever they are from, they have to stop being outlaws.

Professor Soyinka hit the nail on the head with his declaration last Thursday that the federal government’s failure to offer legal, logistical and moral response on the matter is responsible for the unrelenting violence being perpetrated by the herdsmen.

Soyinka’s counsel should be taken seriously. What is required to halt, once and for all, the barbaric acts of the herdsmen is an articulate and firm policy on non-tolerance of violence acts by any group.

The rampaging herdsmen must be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial and have their cows confiscated. It may also be necessary to treat the herdsmen like terrorists if they refuse to cease fire.

May 1, 2016
Herdsmen as indicators of leadership woes

IF herdsmen-farmers clashes have suddenly assumed national security concerns, it is simply because past governments treated the crisis irresponsibly and amateurishly as a law and order problem — of nomadic cattle rearers versus angry farm owners. It is, however, far beyond that. Though the government sometimes recognised the clashes as a cultural and tangentially climatological issue, they have done precious little to anticipate the mushrooming crisis, not to talk of proffering farsighted and realistic solutions. Indeed, the crisis is one of the most powerful emblems of leadership failure in Nigeria, far surpassing any other problem in politics, including disputed and bloody elections and crooked democracy, and far exceeding the disaster in the economy, regardless of how vicious the meltdown is.

The clashes have been nurtured for decades, indeed cuddled as a totem of unimaginative leadership. If the current leadership appreciates their apocalyptic potential, they have neither shown it nor acted to forestall it. From minor eruptions in the past months, the crisis has grown to become major eruptions capable of threatening national security. Since there was no deliberate and imaginative effort to tackle the crisis, it has festered quietly but dangerously. Indeed, it is remarkable that President Muhammadu Buhari has not directly commented on the problem, at least in recent times, as troubling and portentous as it is. He has spoken through both his spokesmen, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, and he has also spoken through Lai Mohammed, the Information minister to order a crackdown. For reasons only he can explain, he has refrained from commenting directly on the crisis. He probably still will.

But if the president has so far failed to comment on the matter, he has even more curiously not visited any of the areas that have experienced devastating attacks and clashes. The problem is deep and complex, and the bloodletting consequent upon the clashes endless and profuse, not to talk of the grave national security implications. The problem deserves urgent attention, and it is time the president formulated a solution and visited the blighted areas to placate grieving victims, whether they are host farming communities or nomadic Fulani. The lack of action, or seeming inattention, has baffled many Nigerians, triggering speculations that the president was in a quandary what to do on account of his Fulani background, and unsure how to act one way or the other, and afraid whichever way he acted that his actions could be misconstrued.

Overt optimism and shallow reflection

The president is the only one who can dispel those unflattering speculations, if he wants to. He really should, for the issues surrounding the problem, and the implications of continuous dithering, could prove not only damaging to his presidency but even more so to national security. Sooner or later, the president will have to speak directly on the matter in order for the country to know what he thinks of the grave matter that has lathered and troubled the country in the past few months. The president must trust his instinct to say and do what is right on the subject. After a few missteps in the past, he must by now have had enough time to reflect on the matter, and more time to come up with what he thinks is the solution worth the trouble of pushing through the legislative process and the mill of national discourse. This may be overly optimistic, for there is always the chance that his reflections on the subject might be either shallow or altogether inappropriate. This column will help him to equip himself to deal with this problem and other problems in the following paragraphs.

Before then, it is important to point out that the failure of leadership evident in the herdsmen-farmers clash is not limited to the presidency; it is also clearly noticeable in the security agencies. The Department of State Service (DSS) and the police are the principal security organs that should tackle the problem: one to anticipate the crisis, and the other to nip it in the bud in case of eruption. Both failed. In the case of the murderous attack on Ukpabi-Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State last Monday, the indigenes reportedly passed on intelligence about an impending attack to the security agencies. The police were still caught flat-footed, if not criminally negligent. But whether the Ukpabi-Nimbo attack was foiled or not, it still would not have absolved the security agencies of lack of professionalism. In virtually all the previous herdsmen attacks, the security agencies had turned a blind eye to the arming of nomads in defiance of the law. In addition, as the police leadership showed in the case of the Agatu, Benue State killings, they are busy second-guessing the presidency on whether or how to tackle the continuing breakdown of law and order in many parts of the country, especially involving farmers and herdsmen skirmishes.

In the Benue State killings, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) was exasperated that the media was blowing casualty figures out of proportion because the Agatu and their political representatives, such as former Senate President David Mark, had indicated that about 500 people, including women and children, were slaughtered. Some police officers even suggested without proof that the herdsmen were non-Nigerians. But when Fulani leaders addressed the press on the Agatu killings, they indicated they were retaliating the murder of a few respected Fulani leaders, even supplying graphic details of the aforesaid provocations. Yet, the police have neither invited the avengers for questioning nor even embarked on investigations into the vendetta. Self-help, the police seem to be saying, is not out of place. But more accurately, the police are simply second-guessing the president, perhaps on account of what they presume to be his loyalties.

And in the case of the Ukpabi-Nimbo killings, where more than 40 people lost their lives in gruesome circumstances with the potential to provoke ethnic backlash of stupendous proportions, the police even suggested at first that the attack was the handiwork of ordinary hoodlums rather than herdsmen. This was despite the intelligence report the locals got and passed on to the security agencies, which report the police handled with lack of professionalism; and this was also irrespective of the fact that the local Hausa/Fulani leaders confirmed the impending attack and promised to help avert it. It is one thing for the police to complain of being outgunned and outnumbered; it is another thing to be negligent in their responsibilities on account of the delicate or untouchable background of the lawbreakers. Well, the implication of the lethargy of the presidency and the security agencies is that the country is now soaked in tension, while inter-ethnic relationship is needlessly and badly frayed. Nigerians must hope that the damage has not scarified the polity nor pushed the country closer to the tipping point.

Multitasking profundity

Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan did not address the herdsmen-farmers age-long conflict on a scale beyond simple law and order approach. The roots of the problem were left severely alone, pristinely untouched. His predecessors were similarly negligent and unimaginative because they all suffered from one major defect or the other in their leadership expertise. But they are all out of office now, and Nigerians can only make passing references to what they did or did not do. The man in office today is President Buhari, and he must be made to discharge his responsibilities in conformity with his oath of office. So far, he has not often acted with the impulse and character of the president of a country made up of more than 250 ethnic groups. Nor has he often acted with the dispatch and multitasking profundity of an elected leader. It is time he remedied these weaknesses and began to address his failings. He has some failings, which he must acknowledge in order to begin the onerous task of governing a potentially great but complex country of differing and sometimes antagonistic cultures and civilisations.

Once President Buhari reaches this eureka moment, he can truly begin to birth changes beyond sloganeering. He is deficient in two things, and he must tackle them headlong. First, he must acquire a deep and immeasurable sense of justice that transcends, and if possible obliterates, his ethnic, religious, social and political backgrounds. Until he does this, his actions and policies will continue to be coloured and undermined by those limiting cultures of his boyhood and adolescence. There is simply no way to build a presidential legacy, let alone the mystique he appears to desire so badly, without passing through this refining furnace of shedding the conflicting and variegated habits ingrained in his persona and worldview. President Buhari really needs to sit down and ask himself what his presidency should look like and what he hopes to be remembered for. Few Nigerians think he has transcended his background. He now has an opportunity to prove sceptics wrong.

Transforming and liberating virtue

President Buhari is a disciplinarian, but he has sometimes acted as if that is an end in itself, and not a means to the nirvana which the transforming and liberating power of that virtue can bring about. Nigeria is deeply divided, a division exacerbated by the Jonathan presidency, a division that corrugates the polity, economy and society revealing many fault lines, a division which many closet religious fanatics masquerading as leaders and finding themselves in position of leadership have aggravated. President Buhari needs to begin the work of healing the country. Given his penchant for discipline, he has begun the work of cleansing the land of corruption, a war he is fighting courageously, albeit sometimes misguidedly. Even though his political opponents accuse him of persecution, and thus deny the achievements he has recorded in the anti-graft war so far, he has improved measurably in observing the rule of law. He has no choice, nor would the country let him have a choice when it comes to that subject. However, he must not give the impression that all his capacity for discipline is useful only to fight corruption when the equally salient issue of ethnic discord is crying for his tough and disciplinarian attention.

Apart from acquiring a deep and implacable sense of justice to help him navigate the treacherous rapids of his presidency, the president must more importantly saddle himself with a great and sublime assignment for the country, an assignment that surpasses the routine task of putting food on the table of Nigerians, building roads and hospitals, and fighting robbers and insurgents. These assignments are doubtless great and indispensable; but they are incapable of defining his presidency and marking him forever as a legend and erecting a memorial in the minds of his people for generations to come. This column does not get the impression that President Buhari sees his assignment beyond the prism of anti-corruption war and reviving the economy, or that he possesses an acute sense of history. Indeed, as a former French leader once said, there is no indication yet that he thinks of moulding Nigeria for the newspapers of the day after tomorrow. And if his ambition and vision for Nigeria are hardly sufficient for today, let alone for the day after tomorrow, how can he develop the ambition and vision to master Africa, as indeed seems the destiny of the largest black nation on earth? Had President Buhari acquired this solid, sublime and encompassing vision, it would have been impossible for him to treat the herdsmen-farmers clash in the ephemeral and insouciant way he has done, or fight corruption unmindful of the damage to the other ennobling virtues vouchsafed by the constitution, or assemble his aides and cabinet without the breathtaking expansiveness that the world’s greatest leaders are capable of by the force of their character.

On the day Osama Bin Laden’s militants brought down the twin towers in New York in 2001, the city’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, told the media that among the first steps he took was to bury his head in a few books of great leaders to reacquaint himself with how they responded to crisis. No leader can be great if he has not learnt to inspire himself with the actions of great world leaders. Nor can a leader reach greatness if his vision for his society is not futuristic and breathtaking. That vision, in the greatness chain of command, cannot be generated if a leader has not immersed himself in the ideas, policies, behaviour and actions of past leaders. President Buhari is in his first year in office, let him see the challenges confronting him as an invitation to rid himself of the habits and weaknesses of the past decades, and as an opportunity to boldly and imaginatively reach for greatness so that when the curtain falls on his presidency, as former United States President Richard Nixon once observed, the lives of Nigerians will have been transformed forever in ways unimaginable.

May 1, 2016
Enter the Herdsmen!

In my dear country Nigeria, the notion that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’, is adopted and applied in a typically absurd manner. As a people, we seem to thrive on the basis that there must always be a smouldering fire to keep us busy.Moreover, rather unfortunately, for our wholesome interdependent coexistence, we have become very adept at creating or perhaps inventing fires. In the period since the return of civil rule, we have successfully dowsed the Sharia fire. In perhaps Obasanjo’s finest leadership moment, he cut off the oxygen from those who were fanning the embers. We dowsed the 2015 election fire. In perhaps Jonathan’s only leadership moment, he threw the lighting rod in his possession into the creeks rather than the highly combustible basin of ethno-religioussubstance that was clearly within reach. In the past few weeks it is evident that the Boko Haram fire is being successfully extinguished and even though the ash still smoulders in different places, our rejuvenated gallant military seem poised to choke out any remaining life in that fire.

An informed analysis will show that all the incidents of fire making material that have troubled our dear country always assume dangerous combustibility when the material is addressed in sectional or religious toga. The most potent weapon of the army of fire-mongers is the manipulation and exploitation of our fragile sectional and religious fault lines. The most effective way to inflame the passion of our people is to spin every occurrence, as part of the orchestrated supremacy war between sections or religions. Our people, unfortunately and for different motivations fall for these and miss the real story. Missing the real story results in needless distractive posturing and causes more harm to the development of our collective interests. For instance if the Boko Haram insurgency had been properly isolated as pure terrorism, the national movement needed to crush it ab initio would have been forged and we will not be where we are today with that. Rather it was dressed as a Muslim versus Christian matter and an attempt to Islamize Nigeria. How such an absurd impossibility got any traction is a discussion for another day.

The fire mongers were setting the stage to dress the President Buhari regime as being on an Islamization mission or its central anti-corruption focus as a sectional agenda. Conscious of the gullibility of a disenchanted and long-suffering people, the government seems to have deprived the fire-mongers of any flammable material in that regard. So just when it seemed we will enjoy a conducive national atmosphere where we could collectively deal with our developmental issues – enter the herdsmen!

In the midst of economic hardship confronting its citizens across the entire country, the last thing this country needs is daily news of marauding herdsmen sacking villages and killing citizens, seemingly for the heck of it. What we do not also need is any attempt to address the troubling development from a sectional prism. By focusing on the Fulani in the herdsmen, we are unwittingly distracted away from uniting to confront the menace. Granted we have security agencies saddled with the responsibility of protecting lives and property, they cannot properly discharge their functions without the understanding and support of the citizenry. The support and understanding of the citizenry will not be available in the present atmosphere of divisive rhetoric and threats, suspiciousness and propaganda of hidden ethnic agenda. Yes, we have Fulani herdsmen, but we also have Fulani farmers, Fulani cattle owners and Fulani cattle rustlers! The Fulani farmer, who also endures the bruntof primitive cattle rearing practices, is likely to see a herdsman as a rival for limited land resources and nothing more. The fact of their common ancestry will not solve the problem because the problem is economic and not tribal or religious, as the fire mongers in our midst will like us to believe.

Disputes over land is an endemic national problem and several communities across Nigeria have suffered severe casualties from resultant communal wars. It always confounds me how just one errant farmer can start a full blown communal crisis by simply albeit wilfully trespassing on land belonging to or claimed by another neighbouring community. Whereas the errant farmer will personally own any products resulting from his trespass, the offended community usually takes up arms against the whole of the neighbouring errant farmer’s community as if it was a group decision. Surely, properly isolating and dealing with the trespass could avoid the shocking and needless loss of innocent lives that usually follows. Similarly, we make a serious and dangerous mistake when we use the term ‘Fulani herdsmen’ as if the Fulani people are accountable for the horrendous crimes committed by herdsman who may or may not be Fulani. Are we unwittingly or mischievously starting a fire in our house when the culprits are perhaps from elsewhere? Surely, we must unite and first defeat the violent herdsmen and begin the implementation of a long term solution.

The emotive reaction I hear to the proposed grazing reserves idea is indicative of deep seated but misplaced prejudice. Unless we ban cows from our agricultural scope, is there really an alternative to government supporting the modernization of that industry, by the provision of dedicated land? Who are the beneficiaries of that industry, if not us in our entirety? It does not make sense to suggest that cows should be reared, only on ‘Fulani’ land, when it is for our entire benefit. That is the proverbial ‘throwing away the baby with the bath water’.

In 1998, on the road from Damaturu to Gashua, our vehicle ran into a herd of cows on the expressway and hit one or two cows. I naturally and being oblivious of the herdsmen problem thought we should stop and inspect the damage to the car. My two Hausa companions screamed for the driver to speed off. My friends in their frightened state explained to me that the herdsmen would have slaughtered us had we stopped! Therefore, I could have been killed, all those years ago because government and the people did not have the will to pursue a policy to domesticate herdsmen and cattle! Fast forward to the present, I am more convinced that my life and those of other innocent victims is worth much more than the ‘sacrifice’ of land for agricultural purposes. Will it make sense, if ‘Igbo armed robbers’ robbed and killed a Yoruba family and the two tribes now engage in war as a result? It will not and likewise it will be a disservice to our good people, if we cloak terrorists in the toga of ‘Fulani herdsmen’ and get distracted from confronting these dangerous bandits with the unity of purpose required to stamp out these acts of terrorism.

May 1, 2016
Killings by Herdsmen: Northern governors defend Fulani

The 19 Northern Governors have taken a strong exception to the branding of perpetrators of crimes around the country as Fulani.

The Governors, rising from a meeting in Kaduna yesterday, said inasmuch as they condemned the recent attacks by suspected herdsmen in Enugu and other parts of the country, it was out of place by anyone to label all criminals as Fulani

Chairman of the Northern States Governors Forum (NSGF) and Governor of Borno State, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, said it was an insult to consider criminals as Fulani.

He said: “We want to unequivocally condemn the recent killings in Enugu and other parts of the country. But we equally condemn the politicization or permit me, the ‘ethinicisation’ of the whole crisis,” the governor said.

“It goes beyond Fulani. If anything happens, they say Fulani herdsmen. To me, it is an insult.

“Kidnapping in this country originated in the Southeast, were they called Igbo kidnappers? We have a great national challenge and we want to call on all and sundry to come and let us solve our common challenges as a people, because the blood of paternity that binds us together supersedes whatever differences that might divide us.”

He also condemned the Agatu killings and charged the media to avoid sensationalism and harp on issues that bind the Nigerians together.

Earlier, in his opening remarks, the NSGF Chairman said that Boko Haram insurgents who have been terrorising the Northeast in the last five years have been degraded.

He was however quick to note that, there are still pockets of bombings in the North-east which has been ravaged by the insurgency for more than five years.

The Governor also said that following their recent visit to the Islamic Development Bank, the bank has resolved to rebuild Northern Nigeria.

With this development, the Governor is calling for the rebuild of destroyed communities as well as total rehabilitation of affected persons who are currently seeking refuge at different camps across the country.

According to him, “in respect of the insurgency in the Northeast, I can confidently confirm that the insurgency has been irredeemably halted and the insurgents themselves completely subdued.

“What remains now are a few isolated pockets of suicide bombings which the recalcitrant remnants of the insurgents use as a last resort to attract attention and create unnecessary panic among the general population,” he stressed.

He then thanked President Buhari, gallant Military and other security agencies for fulfilling promise to bring the insurgency to a complete halt.

“This undoubtedly entails the reconstruction and rehabilitation of public institutions and structures such as Local Government Secretariats, Police Stations, Prisons, Hospitals and Clinics as well as schools, all of which were either partially or completely destroyed by the insurgents.” He said.

On the Islamic Development Bank’s plan, Governor Shetima said, “in our determined efforts to address these challenges in collaborative partnership with the Islamic Development Bank. You may recall that consequent upon a deliberate resolution of the Forum, I had the privilege to lead a top level delegation to the Headquarters of the Islamic Development Bank in Jedda Saudi Arabia, for special consultations with the management of the Bank on possible ways of attracting their assistance in addressing some of the core challenges we, as a region, are facing.”

April 30, 2016
Herdsmen: Activists slam Igbo leaders

Human rights activists in Anambra state have slammed political leaders of Igbo extraction for allegedly not rising up to the occasion following the killing of over 40 people in Nimbo community in Enugu state last Monday.

The apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, (Ohaneze) is meeting Saturday in Enugu to discuss the matter.

The South East/South South coordinator of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Elder Chris Eluemunoh, told The Nation Friday in Awka that the Imeobi caucus of Ohaneze would meet to deliberate on the matter before coming out with any resolution.

Rights activists, Comrade Obi Ochije and Osita Obi praised the presidential directive that the Nimbo culprits be smoked out and prosecuted but said it came a bit late.

Osita Obi said: “our Governors, ministers have failed their people.They do not deserve the respect of their people any longer, it is a shame that they have become dumb suddenly”

Anambra State coordinator of Transform Nigeria Movement (TNM), Comrade Obi Ochije said: “the directive is good because we are all Nigerians.

“The president kept quiet for too long, but now that the directive has come, it is the duty of the security agencies to be watchful and report to the federal government”

“The President should use his powers to forestall another war in the country.”

The Anambra state commissioner of police, Mr. Hosea Karma, said the command has deployed security operatives in border communities in the state.

Karma, who is the state chairman of the security committee set up by Governor Willie Obiano, said everything was under control.

April 29, 2016
CITN chief to FG: Check herdsmen excesses

The President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), Mrs Olateju Somorin, has advised the Federal Government to introduce a Cattle Rearing Tax to check the excesses of herdsmen in parts of the country.

Somorin gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of the abduction ceremony of new members of the institute on Friday in Lagos.

According to Somorin, Cattle Rearing Tax if imposed on nomads will reduce the penchant of herdsmen to invade Nigerian communities at will.

“If Cattle Rearing Tax is imposed, nomads will prefer to stay in a place for grazing.”

She said the Federal Government could achieve this by directing states to impose the tax.

The CITN chief noted that bloodletting arising from incessant killing of farmers by herdsmen could degenerate and give rise to security challenges like the Boko Haram insurgency.

Herdsmen have descended on many communities in parts of the country in recent times, killing, raping and looting communities in a bid to secure grazing rights for their animals.

Somorin lamented that recurrent killing by herdsmen such as the latest invasion of Ukpabi, Nimbo Community in the Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State, was becoming too many.

“The institute is using this opportunity to commiserate with the families of those reported killed in the invasion.

“We pray to God to grant them eternal rest and that God should also prevent its reoccurrence,” she said.

April 29, 2016
Outrage in Senate over herdsmen killings

Angry senators yesterday raised an ad-hoc six-man panel to conduct a public hearing next week on the killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

The decision was taken after an emotional debate of Monday’s killings in an Enugu community by the herdsmen.

The committee is expected to proffer solutions to the herdsmen’s problems.

Members of the committee are: Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume (North East), Senator Shehu Sani (North West), Senator Isiaka Adeleke (South West), Senator Mao Ohuabunwa (South East), Senator Ben Bruce Murray (South South) and Senator Abdullahi Adamu (North Central).

The lawmakers also resolved to invite security chiefs to brief the Senate on the movement of fleeing terrorists to ensure that measures are put in place to forestall a spread of terrorism

They observed a minute silence in memory of those who were killed in the attacks in Nimbo community in Enugu and urged the National Emergency Management Agency, (NEMA) and other relevant agencies to urgently dispatch relief materials to Nimbo community and other neighbouring communities to ameliorate the living conditions of the victims of the attack who have become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

The Senate also urged security agencies to improve their intelligence gathering capabilities and be proactive rather than reactive threats to internal security.

The resolutions and expression f anger followed a motion on “The gory massacre of the people of Nimbo community in Uzo Uwani Local Government of Enugu State.” Sponsored by Senator Chukwuka Utazi, (Enugu North).

Senator Utazi in his lead debate noted that around 4am on Monday, 25th April 2016, Fulani cattle herdsmen in their numbers, armed with sophisticated weapons, invaded Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani LGA, Enugu State while the villagers were asleep.

He listed Nimbo Ngwoko, Ugwuijoro, Kkwuru, Ebor, Enugu Nimbo, Umuome and Ugwuachara as the place the herdsmen attacked.

He lamented that the rampaging herdsmen, who entered the areas through the border with Kogi State, unleashed unspeakable mayhem on the community, shooting, hacking and slitting the throats of unsuspecting residents of the village and trouched buildings.

Uzazi added that “following this orgy of killings by the herdsmen, about 38 people were gruesomely murdered, over 100 persons sustained varying degrees of injury, many fatally.”

The lawmaker, who said there is ongoing intensive search to recover more bodies or account for missing persons, noted that many domestic livestock were slaughtered while countless number of houses and other property were razed.

He said two churches – Christ Holy Church of Nigeria and Parish House of St. Mary Catholic Church – in the community were torched.

Utazi catalogued incidents of Fulani herdsmen attacks in parts of the country and insisted that something should be done.

At the end of the debate, 20 Senators, contributed expressing their frustration over the handling of the issue.

Senator Murray-Bruce (Bayelsa East) said: “They (herdsmen) are a deadly force; they have turned Nigeria into a very dangerous country. They have been going around killing, raping, maiming innocent people and destroying property. They have killed more people in Nigeria on an annual basis than Boko Haram.

”My problem right now is when regular people start retaliating. That day is here and that day is now. The civil war was fought in a conventional passion, one army facing another army, now you are going to have a guerilla warfare. It is not a war anybody can win; it will cause a destruction of Nigeria.

As far as I am concerned you need a license to own a gun. Nobody has a right to own a gun without a gun certainly outside the theatre of war. ”

Senator Godswill Akpabio said the Senate is playing politics by saying that the herdsmen are not Nigerians.

Akpabio wondered how non-Nigerians entered the country with sophisticated weapons to kill, main and rape warning the country cannot survive a second civil war.\

Senator Gilbert Nnaji (Enugu East) said there should have been massive reprisal in Enugu but for the prompt action of security agencies.

Senator Nnaji said the Nimbo attacks should be taken as an eye opener for the government to tackle the problem headlong.

He also prayed the Senate to come up with stringent measures to tackle the issue in the interest of the country.

Senate Chief Whip Olusola Adeyeye said what is happening is grave and should be halted immediately before it gets out of hand.

Adeyeye lamented that “Nigeria has got to where we were before the Biafran war.”

He noted that the idea of state police has become even more urgent than it was before and should be considered.

Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu who presided, said, “We have said so much regarding this very matter. We have to do this because to the ordinary people of Nigeria, what they know is that we are all in government. There is no difference between the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary. So, we are all held responsible in issues such as these.

“I believe it is important that while the Executive is also making efforts, as parliamentarians, we must be seen to be doing something because the people see all of us as being part of government. We must show some sensibility in matters concerning our people. There are too many men and women in Nigeria today who are frustrated by economic realities and they will make themselves available for any possible mishap that this will give rise to.

“I believe that the earlier we nip this on the bud, the better for all of us. We want a very peaceful country and we will need to work towards that. And as leaders, we must be held responsible if there is breakdown of law and order because the primary purpose of government is the protection of lives and properties of the ordinary people. We must be able to come up with immediate approach to this problem, mid-term and long-term solutions so that people will see that we are interested in their welfare.”

April 29, 2016
Enugu prays after herdsmen’s attack

There is an air of helplessness in Enugu State after suspected Fulani cattle herders invaded a community, killing many and destroying property. Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi calls for a fast. OGOCHUKWU IKEJE and CHRIS OJI write

We came, saw and broke down. And there was something else Enugu State Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi did: he called for statewide prayers accompanied with a two-day fast.

Why did the governor wax spiritual?

What happened on Monday in Ukpabi-Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of the state was bizarre. Hundreds of heavily-armed suspected Fulani herdsmen reportedly invaded the community and opened fire on anyone in sight. At the end of the attack, some 48 people were said to be killed, while houses and other structures were set ablaze.

When Governor Ugwuanyi inspected the community on Tuesday under heavy security, he chanced upon a freshly discovered corpse of an apparently well-fed young man killed in the attack. Ugwuanyi wept at the sight. He was also clearly moved by the sheer scale of bloodshed and destruction.

But could there be another reason the governor wept? Perhaps, it was because the bloodshed could have been prevented.

Ugwuanyi said he received some intelligence that the community was under imminent threat of attack, possibly on Monday, and immediately summoned a security meeting on Sunday. He added that “far-reaching decisions” were reached at the meeting to forestall the attack.

“A combined team of police, soldiers, Civil Defence operatives was dispatched to the community,” he said, “but on Monday we heard that they still carried out the threat, resulting in the situation we are facing.”

That probably explains the whiff of helplessness, which necessitated a spiritual approach to a growing menace playing out across the country.

“No matter what, we are hopeful that God will save us from the present situation,” Ugwuanyi said, seeking to assure the people. “That is why I’ve declared fasting and prayers in the state for the next two days.”

Much of the community was razed down in the attack.

The body that moved the governor to tears was that of Ugwu Ogbu, said to be a teacher posted to the community. Women were also raped by the invaders, The Nation learned.

The attackers reportedly got help from mercenaries in Nasarawa State.

Governor Ugwuanyi did much to reassure and calm Nimbo residents. He made a relief donation of N5m to the community. He also sought to direct the traumatised people’s attention to the ultimate source of comfort: heaven.

Ugwuanyi told them, “We are going to seek for God’s intervention in this matter. It is my belief that this too will pass away. The entire people of Enugu State are with you in this moment of grief.”

He assured the people that efforts were being made to find a lasting solution to the problem, urging young men not to take the law into their hands by engaging in any form of reprisal attack.

Some of the clergy were not as tame as the governor. Archbishop of Anglican Communion, Enugu Archdiocese, Dr. Emmanuel Chukwuma warned that if nothing was done to check the herdsmen, he would personally ask pro-Biafra groups to declare war on them.

The fiery clergy was visibly angry over the Monday attack, saying it was now clear that the federal government controlled security agencies deliberately decided when to act and when to forbear.

The cleric also called on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency on Igbo land, adding that many hours after the attack, no arrest was made.

He warned that if the relevant authorities failed to curb the activities of Fulani herdsmen, the breeders would be banned from the Southeast. He added that should they enter, they would meet stiff opposition in the zone.

“I feel bitter, I feel aggrieved,” he said. “I feel sad that the APC government at the centre cannot protect us. We call on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in Igbo land over the Fulani herdsmen’s threat to security in the zone or else we will declare war against the Fulani herdsmen.

“Failure to curb the activities of Fulani herdsmen will make us to ban [them] from rearing their cattle in the zone. Any attempt to harass any Igbo youth in any community will not be taken lightly. We will not tolerate it in Igbo land. We are declaring war against the Fulani herdsmen. We are calling on Northern elders to caution their people. Government should speak out against this Fulani herdsmen menace.

“Failure for the Southeast governors to rise to the security challenge, we will pass vote of no confidence on them. Where did the Fulani herdsmen get the AK 47 rifles? We will bring our own Ogbunigwe out to defend our rights. We will match force with force.

“Fulani herdsmen come to Igbo land, ravage our farmland, rape our women. That we were defeated in the last civil war does not mean we will remain slaves forever even in our land. We will defend our land with our blood and anything including Ogbunigwe. Why was there security lapse? The DSS and other security operatives alerted the government yet they went ahead with their threat by unleashing mayhem

on the villagers. The Fulani herdsmen are more violent than the Biafra agitator.”

Since the attack, Nimbo community has been deserted, meaning that economic activities have shut down, with obvious consequences on the people. Pupils seating the WAEC exams could not go to their centres. Most of those who sustained life-threatening injuries have been receiving treatment at various hospitals including Royal Cross hospital, Bishop Shanahan and Nsukka District hospitals.

One of the injured, a young man who just passed out of the NYSC programme earlier in the month has been referred to National Orthopaedic hospital Enugu, while two others were referred to Park Lane Hospital, Enugu.

The governor visited the Ukpabi Nibo community as well as the three hospitals where injured persons were receiving treatment. He was accompanied by Senator Chuka Utazi representing Enugu North senatorial zone, the GOC, 82 Division, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, the Police Commissioner, Nwodibo Ekechukwu among other security chieftains.

At the palace of the traditional ruler of Nimbo community, Igwe John Akor, the governor lamented the loss of life and property including the Christ Holy Church, which was burnt by the attackers.

One of the community leaders, Dr Ajokwu George appealed to the state government to come to their aid as their community had become a hunting ground for the herders.

“Our community is under threat, we have been burying our loved ones. We are more worried because in this case, we even alerted the security that these people were planning to attack us but nothing was done. As we speak, we’ve recovered over 20 corpses and we are still recovering more. Several others are in the morgue and in the hospitals. What did we do to deserve this? We are really pleading that something be done. Our women have been raped and killed and nothing has happened.

“What has happened is just a tip of the iceberg because we know they will come again. The way they invade our community and rape women before their husbands is worrisome. We need security here not just for a day or week but for months to protect us.”

The state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Ebere Amaraizu confirmed the incident, saying that a police team and the army had been deployed to the area.

The leader of Fulani community in the state, Alhaji Haldo Saidu Baso said he had lived in the state for over 33 years and would not want to witness any crisis between the ethnic groups. He resolved to talk to their people in the state not take the law into their hands.

Baso said: “We will travel to Nasarawa State to talk to the cattle owners and stakeholders to warn the rustlers in Enugu State to steer [clear of] trouble.”

April 29, 2016