In their responses to the mayhem in Plateau State, Jigawa State governor Umar Namadi and Islamic cleric Ahmad Abubakar Gumi stretched logic to the limit. Addressing the root causes of the Plateau crisis, the sheikh argued that laws prohibiting open grazing, as contemplated by the Plateau State government, would be counterproductive. Laws ‘accommodating the traditional practices of herders’ would suffice to eliminate frictions between the various groups in the state, he concluded. After all, he surmised, the Igbo, despite being non-natives, were thriving in Lagos because the state had created ‘inclusive economic environment’. But it is untrue to suggest that no friction and unease pervade Yoruba-Igbo relationship in Lagos, which sometimes erupt in ethnic hatred and bigotry. But while his analogies may be problematic, Sheikh Gumi’s arguments about herders in Plateau may also have been coloured by his hidden prejudices. The Plateau crisis clearly transcends herders-farmers clashes. It has morphed dangerously into ethnic cleansing and land grabbing.
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Closely related to Sheikh Gumi’s suspect analysis on the Plateau crisis is the equally tendentious and prejudiced summation of Jigawa State governor on the same subject. Governor Namadi had argued that former army chief T.Y Danjuma’s call on citizens to take up arms to defend themselves against kidnappers, land grabbers and marauders was impolitic. According to the governor, asking citizens to take up arms and defend themselves would trigger anarchy. He advocated dialogue, but without explaining why dialogue failed in Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina and some other states in the recent past. The incontestable fact is that, given the inability of security agents to protect citizens, the only reasonable deterrence against evil appears to be armed defence. Arming law-abiding citizens will not promote anarchy any more than militant land grabbers, kidnappers and herders, most of whom, it is now established, are foreigners. If the obviously insular Governor Namadi is so empathetic towards rampaging herdsmen, whom Bauchi State governor Bala Mohammed once described as citizens of everywhere, he should redirect his energies at persuading them to abandon their scorched-earth policy.
