Two events that took place on Tuesday, February 9, 2021, have the potential of resolving the current clash between herders and farmers in Nigeria. But both need to be seen being put into effect, going beyond mere words or rhetoric.
The first was the comments by Special Adviser to the President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina. According to him, the president’s position on the matter is clear: anybody bearing arms unlawfully must be arrested and prosecuted.
Adesina explained this as he responded to questions on Politics Today, a live program on Channels Television. He said that the position of the president has always been the same on the clash that is now tearing the country into shreds.
The other event was a virtual meeting of the Northern Nigeria Governors Forum, at which they described open grazing by herdsmen as obsolete, and vowed that it should end.
The governors’ decision needs the enforcement of the President’s position for open gazing to end in Nigeria, and with that all the associated evils it has brought upon ordinary Nigerians.
As Adesina said, “It is not that the president hasn’t spoken, because a number of times, the president has spoken on that issue. “His position has always been the same. Anybody that carries arms unlawfully should be arrested and prosecuted.
“The president has said it countless times and that is the position. Whoever he is, wherever he comes from, criminality is criminality; anybody bearing arms unlawfully must be arrested and prosecuted.”
It is because this has not been done that the herders are on a rampage, carrying on their trade with impunity and intimidation. That is why they brazenly carry AK-47 rifles and countless other weapons with which they fight farmers and any others who dare challenge them.
This explains why our farms, forests, neighborhoods, and highways have become killing fields, and place of rape and kidnapping for ransom. When these so-called herders are not in the bush with their cows (where they exist), they are on the highways, farms, or villages kidnapping the hapless people and carting them into the bush for ransom negotiations.
Before the Northern governors’ decision came, one of them, Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, has guested that the herders should embrace ranching and stop herding their cows from the North to the South in search of pasture.
In a country where unauthorized arms possession is an offense, many people have wondered what qualifies a herdsman to carry an AK-47 as he takes care of his cattle. AK-47 is one of the most dangerous handguns ever made, and for law enforcement agents to look the other way as these guns dangle on the shoulders of mere herdsmen leaves much to be desired.
