When cows and rats turn man-eaters, could it be revenge for their family we eat as delicacy? As herbivorous animals, maybe not. Yet, cows and rats have become agents of gruesome death in our country. For cows, their herds would kill for their beloved to have access to water and vegetation. Any vegetation, wild or cultivated, damned the owner. The people of Benue, Taraba and Plateau states, more than others, bear the scars of this wild revenge. On another level, in Ebonyi, Nasarawa and Kogi, especially, rats revenge by urinating Lassa fever into food.
Perhaps it is not the animals but a revenge for electing incompetent governments over the years. Laggard leaders, who allowed man’s delicacies turn man-eaters. Instead of enjoying the biblical injunction, to subdue the wild as food, out of misrule and incompetence, we allow our food to turn us to food for maggots. Without foresight to pre-empt the ongoing deadly competition for food, between cows and cow eaters, we are at the mercy of a wild revenge which has turned Nigeria into an orgy of violence.
In Ebonyi, the rats are also avenging leadership incompetence, and their scabbard is Lassa fever. Last week, two doctors and a nurse, and of course their patients fell to this revenge. According to a source, the state government has built and handed over to the federal government, a structure for a much needed diagnostic centre. The state intervened following the lethargy of the federal government to build the structure. Now that the building is ready, the federal government should bring in the equipment to save her citizens from rats.
The deaths in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, could be averted or minimised if the equipment and expertise to test victims at the earliest sign of Lassa symptom are in place. To gain a proper diagnosis for a disease which is perennial in the state, a sample will have to be taken to the Specialist Hospital in Irua, Edo State, the closest centre that has the testing machine. Why the governments of Sam Egwu and Martin Elechi, didn’t invest enough in finding a permanent solution to this poverty related disease is strange.
Again, Ebonyi’s Anyim Pius Anyim, was a top shot in the Jonathan government and yet that regime looked away while the cat nibbled away the lives of the people. No doubt, many of our officials are more interested in personal aggrandizement while in power than in saving their fellow citizens from their weaknesses. Perhaps, a revenge for our corrupt practises. Of note, wild rats remain major delicacy in rural Ebonyi, Benue, Kogi and Nassarawa states. They love the taste of wild rats, even though the rats pee into their food to kill them. A revenge for poor hygiene.
Since the Lassa fever ravage some states every year, is it beyond the economy of the affected states to jointly find a solution to that problem? But, perhaps because the federal government unjustly claims excessive share of the available national resources for itself, many state governments rather wait for federal intervention, for a local problem. A revenge for our skewed federalism. When the federal government take taxes from companies operating in states for consumption in states, when it owns the minerals in the states, the states become mere apparition of federating units.
But the narcissist avengers are the cows. They have eaten all the shrubs up north, and they are determined to finish off those in the middle and southern part of the country. Some even meow all the way from Central Africa. As is genuinely feared now, they are determined to eat-off our country. We may have consumed millions of cow, since God knows how long, but is that a reason to allow cows to chew the fabric of our country? Of course, we know that cows use man to avenge itself. Perhaps it a time to do a census of the cows and its owners, so we can know what we are up against.
With government’s dereliction of duty, the census would allow us to know those vicariously responsible for the wild killings going on. After all, we have been told, by those who know, that herders will kill or recruit killers to avenge the death of any cow. They avenge a stolen or dead cow, with the lives of human beings. But the greater challenge is that the cows are now so many, and their free food getting so meagre, that unless common sense returns urgently, Nigeria may end up a cow colony. If the wild revenge continues unabated, we will end up a country of cow colonies without the cow eaters.
I agree that the herders, many of them, now trained killers, may be accustomed to living in the bush and trekking, all their lives; but it is a lie to say they would hate a sedentary life, if it can be more rewarding. The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, and their associates, who speak on their behalf, lie when they defend the practice of an archaic culture that brings herders and others misery. They lie to them that there is no alternative life, better than walking dangerously across the wild in search of pasture, which can be curried in an orderly comfort, for herds and herders.
Those lying spokesmen live in cities, they send their children to school, and yet speak for those who wander across the wild. They are dishonest. Perhaps the right tactics is for the federal government to forcefully herd the herders to the taste of good sedentary life. A life of seeing their cows enjoy a richer pasture, gaining weight and more money from buyers, a life of seeing their children go to school, would be irresistible. But their lying owners, who own them and the cows, will frustrate such a move, so as not to lose the cheap labour and free pasture they enjoy.
While the federal government must rein in the killers in Benue, Taraba and elsewhere, to stem a descent into a civil war, it has to put in place a policy to force the herders, to stop the culture of wandering in the wild, as the only source of ensuring food and water for cattle. Those who say it is an age-long practice and cannot be changed are liars. Selling others as slaves or killing twins, was a culture, albeit barbaric.
Every culture is dynamic, and am sure some of the forbearers of our present crop of leaders, were once itinerant herders, but how many of them can survive in the wild, a day or two. Those of them who defend those living in the wild, while they enjoy city life, are frauds, and scammers. We know they own the cows and love the cheap labour and the free pasture, but it is the responsibility of government at all levels, to stop them, before they turn other Nigerians, to wild avengers.
