The Inspector General Of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, during last Tuesday press briefing at the Force Headquarters in Abuja confirmed the arrest of 26 suspects for their alleged involvement in the massacre at Yelewata community, Benue State during which over 200 people including women, children were mindlessly killed inside their torched houses or shot as they tried to escape. The arrest came barely a week after President Tinubu’s condolence visit during which he had asked “How come no one has been arrested for committing this heinous crime in Yelewata. Inspector General of Police, where are the arrests?
Although the Director General of NOA, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, celebrated the swift action taken by the police and other security agencies after the president’s directive which he claimed has “brought a sense of relief to the affected communities and the nation at large”, I am however not sure many will agree with him that “the arrest was a testament to the commitment of the security agencies to protecting the lives and property of Nigerians”. If anything, it has only brought back bad memories of the Obasanjo and Buhari years when the impression was given that those visiting violence on Nigerians were invincible ghosts.
It is on record that the police and the military maintained their narrative even after a particular governor of Niger State repatriated some herdsmen and their cattle back to Kaduna State in buses. The tale was the same even after the then governors Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Aminu Masari of Katsina and Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna who at different times negotiated and in fact paid the criminals some ransom to stop their assault on Nigerians had confirmed that the criminals laying siege on the middle belt were immigrant Fulani herdsmen. Sadly few arrests were ever made.
But that changed following the visit of Sheikh Gumi to the killer herdsmen’s den where he took photographs with them and returned with his controversial recommendation that those he described as disgruntled herdsmen be compensated, rehabilitated and integrated into the security forces. Curiously, government accepted the recommendation and in no time thousands of repentant criminals emerged from the bush and were rehabilitated in government houses while their victims remain condemned to IDP camps.
Read Also: E-visa system processes over 14,000 applications in six weeks, says minister
Indeed, last week police action after the president’s marching order has raised two fundamental issues. First, it confirmed the fears of Nigerians that there are powerful forces backing and sponsoring herdsmen insurgency in Nigeria whose toes the security forces dare not step on. And second, the theme of ethnic cleansing and land grabbing which echoed during the Tor Tiv’s speech to welcome the president was a sad reminder that the endless killing in Benue is about land grabbing.
Indeed, if there are those who doubt the claim that the battle is over Plateau’s and luxuriant Benue Basin trough, the gathering of about 93 members of the Fulani communities of Jos North, Jos South, Riyom and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas of Plateau State at Crest Hotel in Jos on May 19, 2013 to dialogue together and map a way forward will lay that to rest.
The meeting was facilitated by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre with Afuzere, Anaguta, Beron and Hausa to dialogue about incessant crisis that have engulfed the area and the way forward;
The gathering rejected the labels of ‘strangers and settlers’ in Plateau State by the Berom; disputed the Berom ownership of “Jos North, Jos south by the Riyom and Barkin Ladi LGAs” insisting that ownership of land has for long been taken away by the Land Use Act and the same vested on states government. Finally, they claim that “there is no law in Nigeria that allows any person or groups of persons to identify some persons as strangers or settlers and no law equally allows any persons or group of persons to identify themselves as indigenes of a place”.
Unfortunately, this deliberate misinformation has been used to embolden criminal herders who believe they are fighting a just war. And it was of little relief that our past leaders did not have the political will to challenge those they believe are more equal than others before the law. And this is why I will not advise the president, in spite of his Dutch courage and penchant for taking risks, to confront the representatives of owners of Nigeria.
My unsolicited advice to the president with a deep Yoruba culture will be to start the appeasement with Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II. Here is an Emir who at different times in the past, dared Presidents Jonathan, Buhari and in recent months, President Tinubu whose government’s directive that he should have a low key Sallah celebration because of volatile situation in Kano, he flouted. A letter inviting him to Abuja by the police was quickly withdrawn with an apology.
It is on record that reaction to Sanusi’s ‘fatwa’ on Benue started with an attack on Governor Ortom who narrowly missed death when he was chased by heavily armed herders from his farm. Ever since, there has been no relief for people of the middle belt.
The orgy of killing which started with the killing of 86 became intensified with Buhari declaring on April 12, 2022,that there would be no mercy for those behind the killings of more than a hundred in a series of attack on the middle belt region. In 2018, following the killing of about 200 in Gashish district in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area, about 1,116 children and 1,821 women were crammed together inside the hall of Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society used as IDP camp in Anguldi-Zawan in Jos South LGA.
Julie Bala, Director of Plateau State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) on July 8, 2018 confirmed 38, 051 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) were taking refuge in 31 camps in the state following June 23-4 suspected herdsmen attack on villagers in Barkin Ladi, Riyom, Mangu, Bokkos and Jos South local government areas.
On April 12, 2022, President Buhari who had by this time been rechristened ‘mourner in chief’ was in Ganga Village in the Kanam Local Government Area of Plateau following the burning down of houses that sent 4800 people to IDP camps. Many believe if Muhammadu Sanusi II lifts his ‘fatwa’, Benue and the whole of the Middle Belt will know peace.
Another powerful Nigerian that needed to be appeased is Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State. First as governor, he is a Leviathan who operates above the law. It is on record that he once lionized the killer herdsmen on a live TV by defending their right to carry AK-47. We can only speculate about the source of the AK-47 assault guns the police seized from some of those arrested for last week massacre of about 200 in Benue.
Bala did not stop there; he also said immigrant Fulani in any part of Nigeria from any part of Africa is a Nigerian. Again, we can see where the crooked logic that the Land Use Act has taken away the right of land ownership from indigenes was coming from.
Although, Bala is not Fulani, he needs endorsement of the hegemonic power in the north to fulfil his presidential ambition even if it means being in office while others wield power as was the case with his kinsmen, the assassinated Tafawa Balewa, our first Prime Minister.
Of course we also have Abubakar Malami, Buhari’s attorney general. It is on record he tried to equate Igbo traders engaged in legitimate business of trading in the north with armed herdsmen who secretly took over reserved forest in the south to commit heinous crimes. Many senior lawyers faulted his fraudulent attempt to equate constitutional provision for free movement of Nigerians in their country with marauding cattle indiscriminately destroying subsistence farmers’ farms across the country. Unfortunately, his odious comparison is what herdsmen are using to visit violence on subsistence farmers across the country.
Finally, others that need appeasement include Salisu Ahmadu, national president and Umar Shehu , national secretary, of Fulani Nationality Movement, (FUNAM), who once jointly signed a joint statement where they literarily took responsibility for the killing of 86 in Benue during the Ortom administration when they attributed it to a revenge attack over the killings of Fulani in Nasarawa State, adding that because the federal government was incapable of protecting the interest of Fulani in Nigeria, the Fulani in West Africa have been invited to raise funds and prepare for war.
President Tinubu must positively deploy his celebrated tact to persuade those who are unarguably above the law to understand that distributive justice, even when alternatives including coercion and monopoly of violence on members of your federating states are available, is the best safeguard for peace, stability and shared prosperity in multicultural deeply divided societies.
