I totally agree with your thesis and conclusion that the menace of rogue herders poses an existential threat not only to the South-West but the country as a whole, hence the urgent need for the government to see this as a big challenge to the corporate existence of the Nigerian nation.
Like you rightly observed, the rogue herders should be isolated from the good Fulani who have always lived peacefully with their Yoruba neighbors in the local communities. The bad eggs are coming from outside our shores and appear to be taking advantage of our porous borders to enter the country with dangerous weapons. They are looking for other people’s land to take over.
It is important that security agencies alongside the local vigilante groups take a proactive step before the people are forced to resort to self-help.
From the many accounts of victims who survived their ordeal at the hands of these bandits, the language they speak is foreign, which then confirms that they are illegal aliens.
These are the rogues that should be isolated and dealt with by our security agencies. They should stop repaying our natural hospitality in the spirit of ECOWAS to make life miserable for our people.
I hail from Port Harcourt but work presently in Ilesa in Osun State and due to the nature of my work, I commute from Ilesa town and Akure, the capital of Ondo State, frequently. I have lived in Ilesa for upward of seven years now and in all those years, I have never experienced the sort of apprehension people now generally feel about using either the Akure-Ilesa expressway or the Osogbo-Ibadan highway.
I think the governors of the South-West owe it to their people to shun political correctness and come up with drastic measures to stamp out this menace and remove fear that is now growing.
As the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, I believe President Mohammadu Buhari has the capacity and experience to tackle this issue. I plead with him in the name of God to do the needful and urgently.
- Samson Briggs,
Ilesa, Osun State.
I thought that your elevated position as a leading Nigerian columnist and former commissioner should help in healing our country. When you valorize OPC denizens – “Left to OPC, it is doubtful if the combined forces of these evil herders can survive a day or two of pitched battle across the Yoruba forest”, you forget that things aren’t often as simple as they might appear. These “vermins” as you described the Fulbe herdsmen, is a throwback to Nazi Germany and Rwanda; and we know what happened to those so described, as you did the herders in your piece. They were massively slaughtere! Surely, that can’t be your own wish too for the Fulbe herdsmen. Recent arrests in “Odualand” showed other than “genocidal herdsmen” as the only perpetrators of crime! The factors are too complex and distinguished columnists like you should rise beyond the OPC level of chauvinism to assist understanding.
- Anonymous,
Abuja.
This is the question/conundrum: these killers are NOT challenging the “security” or authority of the State and the State is also NOT challenging the activities of these marauders.
The State subsumes our security under its own impetus/architecture of which the people play no part—we CANNOT expect an armed force that alienates the peoples, that kills “ordinary” people on a whim, that regards “ordinary” people as “bloody civilians”, whose renegades are NEVER punished for their infractions, whose living conditions are also nothing to write home about, we cannot expect this “security” architecture to attend to our security.
This means, the State is, ab initio, BIASED in favor of these killers because the State itself is an organized terror machine.
Even if it is agreed that Boko Haram is challenging the authority/security of the State, the State is still BIASED in favor of Boko Haram hence the emergence of IDPs whose continuity shows the level of BH’s “success” and which is possible only because of the state is “alienated” from the People.
So, the question is WHY?
The existential threat facing ALL of Nigeria rests on this alienation of the people making up Nigeria from the Nigerian State architecture. There is no need for any “security summit” in a state designed for the protection and security of her peoples as this will be a GIVEN. For example, an “automatic” security response would have been provided in an Autonomous Oodualand, with no need for any “security summit” – even if diplomatic tactics with our “neighbors” in the north would also be deployed.
That is why all sorts of excuses were provided by the central government in the beginning – and now confounded by deliberate strengthening of the herdsmen by the same Central government under a narrative that says the problems can be resolved by addressing economic issues in the north, for example, almajirism, which is NOT a question of underdevelopment but a CULTURAL issue which should be tackled as such; after all, Yoruba Muslims don’t encourage or don’t even engage in such a practice; pandering to herdsmen by the central government through various “initiatives” etc.
Solve the foundation of the State and the herdsmen’s atrocities will be history.•
- Pathfinder International
To say the government of the day is not complicit by their neither-here-nor-there responce to the activities of these herders is an understatement. At the height of the herdsmen murderous escapades in the Middle Belt region, the government’s body language was one of derision, making all sorts of excuses for the herdsmen.
At a time a presidential spokesperson gave the morbid advice to victims of the atrocities of the herdsmen to either give up their land or die defending it. It is such tacit pampering that has emboldened the terrorists to up their game and move into the forests of the Southern region.
Our major problem as a country is that we love to live in denial, even when death is starring us in the face.
When you fail to properly diagnose a disease, it will be difficult to administer the right drugs. We were quick to label the non-violence activities of the IPOB as terrorism and went ahead to proscribe them. But the Federal Government is reluctant to properly profile the murderous activities of the assault-rifle-wielding herdsmen of now. If you do not agree you have a disease you certainly cannot submit yourself for treatment. That is the point we have unfortunately found ourselves.
No amount of meetings and discourse will stem the violent activities of these terror squad without a firm deterrent plan. We may end buying some time and allow the cancer to fester. As long as we do not do away with the nomadic system of cattle breeding, we will still be open to having all violent criminal elements taking up all our ungoverned spaces as herders to continue to visit death, rape and plundering upon us.
- Johnnie Eze
Enough of this double-faced approach by South-west leaders, especially since former Gov Fayose of Ekiti State left office. The South-west legislatures should pass a law, like their Benue State counterpart, prohibiting open grazing in their respective states.
- Ambrose Akor
The silence of the FG is most disheartening as these “herdsmen” keep destroying farms in the most productive agricultural areas of Nigeria; an action tantamount to levying war on Nigeria!
- Remi
Both the verbal and body language of the government show beyond doubt a bias or sympathy for the criminal herders, be they foreigners or locals. Or why would the Nigerian Army refuse to engage invaders or drive them out of the lands being occupied, especially in the Middle Belt? It is as if the invaders came on INVITATION.
- Yemi Ogunsola
Corrigendum
In last week’s article entitled “Osoba’s cold wars and last laugh”, Prince Julius Adelusi Adeluyi (Chairman of Juli Pharmacy) was mistyped “Akinlusi Akinluyi”. The typo is regretted.
