A Little Too Late …Curbing Excesses Of Fulani Herdsmen

Buhari and Arase Solomon

They started as mere clashes between farmers and herdsmen, the former protesting destruction of farmlands by cows and the latter claiming unqualified right of the animals to feed, if and when hungry.
Amusing as the argument sounded, the herdsmen continued their annoying pastime with impunity and recklessness.
Then, it graduated into outright attacks of farmers who dared protest the destruction of their crops. Heavily armed with combat weapons, the herdsmen soon became something like an invading army, crushing resistance, sacking communities, beheading opposition and killing defenceless men, women and children.
On February 12, this year, Ondo State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko raised the alarm that except urgent security steps were taken, the incessant clashes between farmers and Fulani herdsmen would create bigger security problems than that posed by Boko Haram.
Mimiko was speaking in Akure when the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Solomon Arase visited the state over complaints of clashes resulting in disturbing fatalities. It was the governor’s view that the Federal Government needed to invest in the development of ranches to avoid greater danger likely to be caused by the clashes. He described the upsurge as a new trend of security challenges that should be tackled headlong before it degenerated into big security threat.
On that occasion, the IGP assured of an end to the menace, saying that efforts would be made to fully enforce the cattle ranch and grazing routes policies.
His assurance came on the heels of similar clashes in Kwara and other parts of the South West.
The following week, Plateau communities came under fire by armed Fulani herdsmen, who killed many defenceless citizens. Farmlands were also destroyed and life made very unbearable for inhabitants. That attack was followed by another, and yet another with  score of fatalities.
Disturbing as the trend was, the Federal government did little or nothing. The Fulani herdsmen were therefore, emboldened to further conquer more grounds, acquiring more combat weapons, which they brandished openly, and attacked host communities at will.
Enugu which seemed distant for such unwarranted attacks, felt the pain of losing loved ones through attacks by Fulani herdsmen last week. And Governor Ugwuanyi wept as he condoled with families of the dead. The grief was indeed heart-breaking. To behold such avoidable deaths at peace time, through unprovoked armed attacks was indeed unimaginable.
Expectedly, the youth of the South-East Nigeria were provoked and threatened reprisals. That might have informed an urgent meeting of Governors of the Political zone, with the sole intention of finding solutions to the problem.
Apart from the Boko Haram insurgency, the Fulani Herdsmen’s attacks have recorded the most casualties in recent history. Yet, the Federal government looked the other way.
For a country reeling under the huge weight of a crippling economy on account of the free fall in price of Nigeria’s major export, crude, allowing insecurity of any kind is a luxury any reasonable administration can afford. But it seems that the word insecurity has different meanings to the Buhari administration depending on who and where it is involved.
Since the inception of this administration, hardly any week passed without sad stories of one needless Fulani Herdsmen attack on one community to another and with many deaths. Sometimes, whole communities were razed and fellow Nigerians made refugees in their own land.
In all such instances, there were public outcries calling for action. There were hue and cry from states like Kwara, Benue and Plateau, but those alarms failed to conjure the feeling of urgency needed to check the excesses of the Fulani herdsmen.
The Enugu example of last week, all the mourning over the deaths, the threats of reprisals would have been avoided if the Federal government had acted in a timely manner or at least, condemned the ravaging herdsmen’s insurgency.
Prior to that, many Nigerians expected the Commander-In-Chief to issue the right orders necessary to stop the killings. He never did. Yet for months, Nigerians repeatedly called for action against herdsmen, who rather than the traditional sticks used to guide their cows, today arm themselves with lethal weapons which they use in eliminating host-communities who dare complain about destruction of their farmlands.
That is why many consider Buhari’s recent directive to the IGP to fish out the culprits, as an order a little too late. Herdsmen have tasted the orgy of blood and in places of little resistance recorded bloody conquests that have emboldened them beyond impunity levels.
Some even said, the herdsmen are more dangerous and heartless than the Boko Haram terrorists, as the social media is awash with photographs of headless bodies, allegedly beheaded by them.
In contrast, just for a threat by some youth who called themselves new militants of the Niger Delta, to vandalise oil pipelines unless proper attention was given to the area, President Buhari ordered service chiefs to treat such vandals as Boko Haram insurgents.
With such order, service chiefs were in no time, in parts of the Niger Delta apparently to extend the order of the Commander-In-Chief to the officers, in the area. That means shoot at sight and to kill, if necessary.
No such order was issued in the case of the Fulani herdsmen by Buhari in spite of the countless human lives taken by their attacks across the country. Infact, some said dispatching the IGP to handle the matter instead of military chiefs, affirms the lightness of the Herdsmen’s nuisance to the Central government. Why so?
These are strange times. There is so much insecurity in the land. Many Nigerians are hungry. The political arena seems to be on the standstill on account of near endless bickering over the 2016 national budget. There is so much discontent even among the elite, while students are getting more and more restive.
Nearly a year into the four year tenure of this government, there is hardly anything to point to, that it was ready to govern. All the noise about anti-corruption war has yet to record any conviction not to mention the lack of transparency in making public how much has so far been recovered of the looted resources.
Cases of armed robbery, kidnapping and cult-related violence have increased within the period. Many Nigerians now sleep with an eye open, not knowing when the attacker would call.
On the democratic front, all the gains made after the general elections of last year have frittered away. Many no longer have faith in the electoral process, as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is now famed for conducting inconclusive elections that deny a whole state representation at the National Assembly, as long as such state is an opposition state.
Infact, there is general hunger, starvation, frustration and distrust in the land.
These are why everything should be done by the Commander-In-Chief to disarm the herdsmen and mark out their limits. Being individual businessmen, herdsmen as done in other lands, ought to own their ranches and not covert others’ farmlands into their grazing fields and attack when resisted. There is nothing wrong if the Federal Government decides to help them out with such ranches, under one of its agriculture support schemes, bottomline is, the herdsmen’s excesses be checked.
My Agony is that the Fulani Herdsmen, like a monster growing bigger than its groomer, have tasted blood, enjoyed killing and assumed power of some sort, and may not be too easy to tame. And unless the required political will is summoned by the commander-in-chief to crush the murderous army of herdsmen, as he would pipeline vandals, we might well be expecting a replacement for the Boko Haram.

Soye Wilson Jamabo