Irresponsible call by Northern Elders Forum

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Tension is building in the southern and central parts of the country following increasing incidents of kidnapping, armed robbery and other violent crimes allegedly being perpetrated by armed herdsmen. The South West has been the worst hit in recent times with the shooting to death of the daughter of Afenifere leader Reuben Fasoranti being the height.

Olufunke Olakunri, the 58-year old daughter of Pa Fasoranti was gunned down by unknown gunmen on July 13 on the Benin-Ore axis of the Benin-Lagos Expressway while returning to Lagos after a visit to her father in Akure, Ondo State.

Prior to the incident, the social media have been awash with both written and video reports, recounting the experience of victims of such crimes allegedly perpetrated by the herdsmen. While the Police have described these attacks as the handiwork of typical criminals like armed robbers, the narrative out there is that these criminals are actually Fulani herdsmen from the northern part of the country.

Armed with sophisticated weapons such as AK-47 rifles and other dangerous weapons, these criminals have reportedly set up camps in parts of the dense rainforest in the South West, particularly in Ondo State where their victims are often kept and terrorized while negotiating their ransom. They have also been reported to be regularly, albeit illegally, setting up road blocks on some obscured highways in the region to either extort their victims directly or kidnap them.

Expectedly, these incidents have drawn the ire of both the elite and the general public in most of the states affected by this criminality. In the South West, for instance, there have been calls for local militias to come out and defend their territories and their people from these criminals. Similar calls have been made in the South East geopolitical zone. Up north, in the centre of the country, it is a case of déjà vu, especially in states like Benue and Plateau where such criminality has been the order of the day in the past few years, with security agencies battling repeatedly to separate the farmers and the herdsmen.

The spread of this criminality that started a couple of years back in the Benue/Plateau/Taraba axis in the North East, and southern Kaduna in the North West to other parts of the country, especially the south in recent months not only poses serious security problem to the country but also an existential one.

For the first time since the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970, the Nigerian state faces the threat of ethnic violence on a national scale. The ethnic profiling of these criminally minded herdsmen as Fulani herdsmen is inadvertently pitching a large chunk of the Nigerian population, especially in the south against the Hausa/Fulani nation in a way akin to the crisis that ignited the civil war in 1967.

While government is trying to isolate these criminals for punishment, from among thousands of genuine and peace loving herdsmen, public comments by some ethnic based organizations are not helping matters. Some of these comments have verged on shear irresponsibility like the one made by the Northern Elders Forum and the Coalition of Northern Groups calling on Fulani herdsmen to leave the southern part of Nigeria. They hinged their call on perceived threat to the safety of life and property of the herdsmen in southern Nigeria. They claimed that some southern leaders had allegedly openly threatened war against Fulani herdsmen. And as a result, only a return to the North, in their estimation, could guarantee the safety of life and property of the herdsmen.

The call, which has been rightly condemned by President Muhammadu Buhari, was similar to the one made to the Ibos living in the north by the Eastern Region leaders in the second half of the 1960s, which eventually led to the outbreak of the civil war.

While the president, in his condemnation of the Northern Elders Forum, called on the Fulani herdsmen to ignore the call to return home, he also reassured them and other Nigerians living outside their states of origin of their safety wherever they chose to live. He also assured them that the Nigerian constitution allows them to live anywhere in the country.

Good and reassuring as this is, it has done little to douse the ethnic tension building up in the South East, South West, South South and even the North Central against our compatriots from the core north who happen to be herdsmen tending their animals.

While condemning the provocative statements made the Northern Elders Forum and their allies on such a sensitive issue as inter ethnic relations in the country, as clearly irresponsible, we call on the Federal Government not to brush their concerns as well as the concerns of similar organizations in the south on the same issue, aside.

While it is the legitimate right of the herdsmen to take their animals for grazing in any part of the country, the rights of the farmers and the local communities they pass through in the process, are also guaranteed by law and should not only be protected but also not trampled upon.

Since it is the duty of government to guarantee and protect the rights, both economic and political, of all citizens, it is about time all tiers and arms of government got together to provide a lasting solution. In doing this however, government should first separate criminality from the genuine business activities of both the herdsmen and the farmers.

Any herdsman or group of herdsmen engaged in kidnaping, rape, armed robbery, extortion or any other form of criminality should be promptly arrested, prosecuted and punished accordingly. Ditto for any farmer or farmers found to be engaged in any criminal activity against the herdsmen. In doing this, government should be firm but fair, without any ethnic bias or sentiment.

It is when this is done that both sides will be convinced that government is indeed protecting their interest and will feel free to entrust such in the hands of government. Anything short of this might force them to resort to self help.

If the armed forces would have to be involved to achieve this as was the case with the problem of banditry in the North West, so be it.

With the issue of criminality sorted out, government would have to return to the issue of grazing and farming that originally gave rise to the ethnic tension. Various suggestions have been put forward by the Federal Government, including the controversial Ruga arrangement, but none seems to be acceptable to most of the states, especially in the south. Luckily, in spite of this and Federal Government’s suspension of the project, in the face of stiff opposition in some quarters, some states in the North like Kano are going ahead. This is good, and in the spirit of finding lasting solution to the problem. Other states could also key into the project and adapt it to suit their environment/situation or design their own project while dialoguing with the herdsmen. This could be the permanent solution to the herdsmen/farmers problem.

Of immediate concern though, is the spate of criminality around this whole herdsmen/farmers problem and if organizations like the Northern Elders Forum cannot help with solutions, they should not compound it with reckless and irresponsible statements. As elders, they ought to know better.

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