After weeks of paying lip service to the killings in Southern Kaduna, President Buhari seemingly woke up from slumber, with a series of executive fiats to security agencies on the need for “strong action” to deal with the sustained and systemic violence perpetrated by marauding Fulani herdsmen in Southern Kaduna. In the face of negligence by security forces and incompetence bordering on indifference of the state and federal government, many accusing fingers have been pointed at the administration of Governor Nasir El-Rufai, for deliberate failure to halt the killings. Buhari’s “decisive measures” have seen a visit by the Inspector-General of Police to the region, as well as plans by the Nigerian army to set up two battalions in Southern Kaduna. This only signposted the poor approach to the crisis and exposes the indifference and prevarication of state actors at all levels, who exhibited criminal negligence instead of being proactive in halting the carnage. This is a crisis that has gone past empty platitudes and the fact that the president is coming late to the party is a letdown of the Nigerian people, which is unacceptable as it is despicable. President Buhari can, and ought to have done better.
“President Muhammadu Buhari has, over the past week, given instructions for decisive measures aimed at bringing an end to the recurring acts of violence and destruction in the Southern part of Kaduna State,” noted a press release from Aso Rock over the weekend. “President Buhari has equally directed the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to carry out a joint assessment of the situation with the sister agency in Kaduna, SEMA, to determine the level of response required for urgent aid to the victims of the violence…These measures should soon ensure the return of normalcy to the region, while the Kaduna State government continues its peace building efforts.” To add insult to injury, the President commended efforts of the State government and the security agencies in the steps taken so far to curtail the violence. Really? Seriously?
The massacre of indigenes by herdsmen in southern Kaduna has been tragic and horrendous. That not a single herdsman has either been arrested or prosecuted despite the havoc they have wrecked in many communities across the country, smack of official complicity. The other dimension of perceived government complicity beyond its deafening silence is revelations that the Kaduna State government under El-Rufai, paid ransom to the Fulani herdsmen. Although the Kaduna state government has come out to clarify that it was only implementing the recommendations made to the previous government of the late Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa by a committee on the same crisis, the fact that the Fulani militants have continued their attacks on many communities, raping and killing women and children, is evidence that the El-Rufai government’s claim to a solution is actually an exacerbation of the problem.
Amidst this controversy and extant tension between the indigenous peoples of Southern Kaduna, the State government imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew on some local councils, but the attacks continued unabated. This is indeed a dangerous development and it is unnerving that Buhari; himself a Fulani, has not responded with any sense of urgency to the danger. This is no time for political correctness; the Institute for Economics and Peace, Global Terrorism Index (GTI) has designated the Fulani herdsmen as the fifth deadliest terror group in the world. Rightly or wrongly, there is already a growing perception of a hidden agenda that borders on territorial conquest and Islamization of Nigeria, with herdsmen being the proxy arrowhead of this militancy.
Many groups have drawn the attention of the global community and International Criminal Court to what they deem the government’s complicity. The Catholic Archdiocese of Kafanchan has called for an inquiry while also complaining of government’s partisanship in the crisis. The deep and perennial nature of the conflict has engendered various view points as to the cause of the carnage in Southern Kaduna. Despite differences in opinion, what is not in doubt is that the peoples of Southern Kaduna are under siege from the killer herdsmen, who have been encouraged by the inaction of the government establishment. The Southern Kaduna killings are only a chip of the entire narrative of a sinister threat to the corporate existence of Nigeria as a nation. As a matter of fact, the entire Middle Belt, Southern Kaduna and parts of Southern Nigeria have been at the receiving end of chilling killings by marauding Fulani herdsmen which many government spokesmen have tried to dismiss.
The last year witnessed a harvest of killings by these marauding herdsmen, whose atrocious activities in Adamawa alone have spurned internally displaced persons (IDPs) of about 40,000. The continuing invasion of the farmers’ land, and the unending kidnapping, raping and killings by the Fulani herdsmen may result in a backlash of catastrophic dimensions. Given the sadistic patterns of killings by the herdsmen, at this juncture, many Nigerians are asking the Fulani what they really want. It is not that anyone is fighting them, but this question has become necessary as a first step towards dealing with the problem. Such impunity as the Fulani herdsmen are perpetrating today by wielding AK47 assault and automatic weapons and the magnitude of their violent activities without intervention from any arm of the security forces, is unsettling. The fact that the Fulani invaders seem to be enjoying some measure of immunity from the government is vexatious and provocative.
Even if one tries to rationalize the situation as a conflict between cattle ranchers and land owners, the fact that the Fulani herdsmen believe they have some exclusive right to graze anywhere in Nigeria, killing and maiming innocent people while their cattle destroy farm crops, is unacceptable. How can cows be valued more than human beings? It is even more perplexing when the partisan response of disarming communities primed for self-defence against the herdsmen by the same government is weighed against the government’s indifference to killings of innocent people by the herdsmen.
The dangerous activities of the Fulani herdsmen have curiously become the third national security crisis in a country still smarting from the debilitating effects of Boko Haram in the Northeast and Niger Delta militants. This is worrisome. With aggrieved communities, especially in southern Nigeria now poised to literally resist the destructive invasion of their communities by the Fulani herdsmen, Nigeria appears headed for another crisis; this time with such devastating effect as could engulf the whole nation, and threaten its very survival as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation. The President must wake up to this clear and present danger, in order to avoid a catastrophe that may well be Nigeria’s greatest undoing.
