Fulani Herdsmen: Attack on Men of God and Complicity of the Federal Government

It is said, when a person wakes up, that is their morning; this write up marks my new year on Facebook, HAPPY NEW YEAR my friends on Facebook. Welcome to a glorious year in our lives, in this year 2017 you will break new boundaries of progress individually. As for Nigeria, I do not know if we’ll make any significant progress because of bad leadership that has plagued the country in the last two years. Nonetheless, it is pertinent for me, all patriots and concerned citizens to continue to contribute to public opinion on the state of our union.

It has started brewing again, the politically correct and hatchet men of the present administration continue to launder the image of the failure we have in Aso Rock attacking anyone that holds any opposing view. We are all aware of the menace of Fulani Herdsmen that have become a deadly evil leaving destruction in its wake. There’s a video of Apostle Suleman — the pastor that gave Gov el-Rufai ultimatum that he will die if he regulates churches in Kaduna state — in which he asked his church members to ‘kill Fulani herdsmen’ that enter his church. In parts of the video, he beckoned on his congregation thus, “….and I told my people, any Fulani herdsmen you see around you, kill him……around this church, any Fulani herdsman that enter by mistake and want to pretend, kill him”.

Many are appalled and disturbed by his radical stance against the marauding herdsmen but not many have cared to point out that the brazenness and audacity of the killer herdsmen that have taken a dangerous dimension since President Buhari took the oath of office two years. As if they were waiting for their Pharaoh to get to power, they have been emboldened and their tales of destruction dots across several states in the South –East, South-West and North-Central. They have been designated the world’s fourth deadliest terrorist group by the United Nations and we have been overwhelmed by their killings which have shaken the country, raise emotions, stoke flames of distrust and pit ethnic groups against each other. They destroy citizens’ farmland and if citizens happen to react, they slaughter them. I will not inundate you with their killings in Enugu, Abia, Ekiti, Benue and Plateau of which they have for some time now berthed in Southern Kaduna terrorising the indigenes of that area with hundreds dead. In Southern Kaduna, we are all aware of el-Rufai informing Nigerians last year that he paid the herdsmen to stop killing Kaduna citizens he swore an oath to protect. The Sultan, Arewa groups and most northerners posit that these herdsmen are foreigners, corroborated by the present government which can be said to implicitly harbour sentiments for the killer herdsmen. You begin to think, how can herdsmen from neighbouring countries, stroll into Nigeria with their cattle, rampage on citizens farmland and invade their privacies, kill them and then the government feigns ignorance, behaves like it doesn’t matter, doesn’t even mention it in their statements, waits for weeks after trying to appease foreigners killing Nigerian citizens only to act when thousands have been massacred in cold blood. Is the government of Nigeria’s first interest to protect Fulani Herdsmen that come from other countries that violate the rights of its citizens while its citizens are left to the mercy of the bloody herdsmen?

Recently Christian leaders like Bishop Oyedepo, Archbishop Onaiyekan and Apostle Suleman have to voice out to stop the carnage, but now, sycophantic opinion makers and fake human right activists are now pontificating on the perils of religious riots and incitements, they have been in slumber since the herdsmen started their dance of death and they have remain dumb since our government wanted to create grazing routes through a commission that can confiscate citizens’ lands and hand over to Fulani herdsmen whom they government alludes are ‘foreigners’. Does this not smack of complicity by the Nigeria state?

This is a government that has mouthed diversification as one of its pivot policies to move the country forward allowing herdsmen the right to trample on farmlands which are the basis for arable agriculture so they can advance their livestock farming because it is only meat that we eat in Nigeria. Imagine that a farmer takes loan from the Bank of Agriculture, plants crops which have germinated and grown only for herdsmen to plunder and destroy the farm armed with dangerous weapons including AK-47. Now why will the farmer lose their hard labour while the herdsmen are allowed to carry on their livestock farming? When government in this age believes that grazing routes remains its best alternative to encourage livestock farming, it means we have people stuck in stone age mentality trying to develop Nigeria in this jet and digital age. What happens to ranches and modern ways of farming replicate across the entire globe. We do not export beef and other countries have developed farm practises in the Americas, Europe and Asia in which animals are reared using modern practises such as ranches. Aside northerners, the southerners do not engage in this kind of prehistoric, backward and nonsensical method of farming that breeds humans that are subjected to animalistic treatment, trekking thousands of miles in practise of livestock farming, living like cavemen, exposed to the harshest of all weathers which hardens and removes all human emotions in them, makes them susceptible to extreme violence like endangered animals at the slightest confrontation, monsters parading as humans. They slaughter human beings like they slaughter cattle. The life of one of their cattle worth many human lives in their own crazy reasoning. If you are supporting the creation of grazing routes, if you support the kind of lives these herdsmen are subjected to by those who send them out with cattle to junket across countries, then you are inhuman and deserve to be a Fulani herdsmen yourself so you have a taste of the barbaric lifestyle you advocate.

We all know that the north has huge lands spaces, we are told that Sambisa forest is larger than so many states in Southern Nigeria and I call on the government to put on their thinking caps to create grazing reserves, convert drylands and deserts in the 19 northern states to grazing lands like we have in South America and US states like Texas so these herdsmen can be taught modern farming practises. Their children will be educated and their cattle transported by trucks or train to markets across Nigeria where they are needed for sale. But if the government remains silent, allows the herdsmen to continue to roam around, plunder and violate the right and privacy of citizens mostly Christians, they should expect nothing less than a call to self-defence by our Christian leaders. Our Christian leaders waited two years for the government to call the herdsmen to order, come up with innovate ways of ensuring that the herdsmen continue their livestock farming without destroying farmland and causing destruction. Our Christian leaders have no choice to call on Christians to defend themselves. We cannot sit in our houses and churches and be subjugated by purportedly foreign or local Fulani herdsmen who come with their cattle to our domains to create trouble, kill and destroy.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!