With commendations coming to the Nigerian government from various quarters, including the United Nations, for the successes recorded in the fight against Boko Haram in 2016, Nigerians are asking the government to replicate the same feat in the fight against Fulani herdsmen and kidnappers.
They say apart from Boko Haram, which had hitherto killed thousands of people in the North-East and sacked several communities, these two other groups equally pose serious security threat to the nation and its citizens.
Only recently, a total of 808 people were killed by suspected Fulani herdsmen in 53 villages across four local government areas in Kaduna State.
Giving statistics of the killings and destruction in a statement, the leadership of the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan, Kaduna State, informed that 57 people were injured, farm produce estimated at N5.5 billion was destroyed, while a total of 1,422 houses and 16 churches were burnt.
The Nigerian Army has evidently recorded victories in the ongoing efforts to rid the North-East of Boko Haram insurgents. The Army again consolidated on its current successes when it discovered a bomb-making factory left behind by fleeing insurgents. Some of the items recovered at the factory included vehicles, several motorcycles and bomb-making materials.
According to military authority, 1,240 suspected Boko Haram terrorists were arrested during a mop-up operation by troops inside the Sambisa forest.
Ifeanyi Araraume, who represented Imo North Senatorial District at the National Assembly between 1999 and 2003, described the capture of Sambisa forest as a fulfilment of President Muhammadu Buhari’s electoral promise to defeat insurgency in the country.
Major-General Lucky Irabor, theatre commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, while updating journalists on what the military authority themed ‘Operation Rescue Final’ in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, had said the Army recovered Abubakar Shekau’s Qur’an and flag in Camp Zero, the Boko Haram’s headquarters in Sambisa forest.
“413 of the suspects arrested are male adults; 323 female adults; 251 male children; and 253 female children. We are interrogating them to know whether they are Boko Haram members, because there is no way somebody that is not their member would live inside Sambisa forest,” he said.
“We are still on the trail of the terrorists and I want to assure you that all escape routes have been blocked. Within this period also, about 30 fleeing suspected Boko Haram members have surrendered to the Niger Multinational Troops on the shores of the Lake Chad and we learnt that they were taken to Difa in the Niger Republic,” he said.
But controversy has, however, been trailing the purported Boko Haram flag that the military authority said it recovered at Sambisa forest, after a video reportedly posted by Abubakar Shekau surfaced on social media discrediting the military position on the flag and the war in general.
But President Buhari has since received the flag of Boko Haram from the Sambisa forest as claimed by the military. The president, who spoke at the 2016 Regimental Dinner organized by the Presidential Brigades of Guards in Abuja, however, kept mute along with the military on Abubakar Shekau’s denial of his defeat in the new video. Nothing was also said about the attacks in Borno on December 30, 2016.
These notwithstanding, the agenda Nigerians are now setting for crime-fighting agencies after the near decimation of Boko Haram is that the same effort should be deployed to fight the criminal activities of herdsmen and kidnappers.
Military, El-Rufai complication
A statement signed by Ibrahim Yakubu, vicar general, Diocese of Kafanchan, alleged that during the recent herdsmen attacks in parts of Kaduna State, the military merely watched and supervised the burning of homes and that when the youths mobilised to repel the attackers, the soldiers deliberately blocked them from entering the town.
“It didn’t take the government of El-Rufai time to figure out what to do to tackle armed robbery and cattle rustling in the Birnin Gwari area. Within the shortest possible time, soldiers were deployed and many of the cattle rustlers and bandits were either killed or arrested and cows in their hundreds were rescued,” the statement said.
“This is commendable and we are happy that the Fulanis in Birnin Gwari have been rescued from these bandits. If the government can deploy helicopters and soldiers to Birnin Gwari to help in tracking down the terrorists, why is the same government unwilling to deploy the same soldiers and helicopters to Southern Kaduna to help flush out the Fulani herdsmen terrorising indigenes of Southern Kaduna?” it said.
Moses Ochonu, associate professor, African History at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, United States, observed in a recent article that the Southern Kaduna attack was part of a broader genocidal war against Nigerians.
“As we speak, an estimated 53 villages lay in ruins, some of them occupied by Fulani herdsmen and their cattle, a forceful annexation that recalls the similarly forceful displacement in Agatu,” wrote Ochonu, who is also author of Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression (2009).
He noted that although the crisis predates the administration of Governor Nasir el-Rufai, and thus the governor cannot be accused of causing it or being behind it as being insinuated in some quarters, his utterances and actions in the past and the present had exacerbated the problem and emboldened the attackers.
“El-Rufai has made several egregious errors in dealing with the crisis. Some of these errors are errors of approach, thinking, and mentality. The errors have inspired actions that have wittingly or unwittingly transformed what was a low-level series of massacres into a full-blown genocide.
“El-Rufai is widely regarded as a Fulani supremacist, and with good reason. On July 12, 2012, he tweeted the following: ‘We will write this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not, that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it takes.’ The governor’s response to the killings in Southern Kaduna has been eerily consistent with this mindset.
“He was lending gubernatorial authority and credibility to the claims of foreign invaders that they are revenging the killing of their kinsmen on Nigerian soil. Then, of course, there is the fact that even if the claim of revenge were legitimate, one would be compelled to ask how much Southern Kaduna blood would need to be spilled to pay for the herdsmen and cattle allegedly killed in 2011?” Ochonu wrote.
Recall that in the past year, many Nigerian rural communities were attacked by men suspected to be Fulani herdsmen, with Agatu in Benue State and Nimbo in Enugu State being the worst hit with high casualties.
Many Nigerians had accused the President Buhari-led Federal Government of not responding to the killings by herdsmen and security agencies of not doing enough to curtail their bloody campaigns.
Poverty, ignorance, natural marginalisation to blame
Balarabe Musa, former governor of the old Kaduna State, identified poverty, ignorance and natural marginalization as the three factors responsible for the Southern Kaduna crisis, especially the latest massacre of helpless residents by men said to be Fulani herdsmen.
He said there is no presence of both government and private sector in the region, lamenting that even government-supported commercial farming has also eluded the people.
“Poverty and ignorance are part of the problems. There is also the issue of natural marginalization, which has made it difficult for Southern Kaduna to produce the governor of the state because they don’t have the voting power. They are aggrieved by all these factors,” he told BDSUNDAY in an interview.
He also took a swipe on Southern Kaduna elites whom he accused of fuelling the marginalization and not doing enough to bring to the fore developmental challenges confronting the region.
“Southern Kaduna elites are part of the problems. At a time, a political party nominated their son to be its governorship candidate but they denounced him and rather campaigned and voted for the party who gave them money,” Musa said.
“If you go to Southern Kaduna now, you will find that there is no single factory; no plant where they produce even confectionery; no commercial farming, but I am surprised that elites from the region are comfortable with the situation.”
Agenda for security agencies
Asked to suggest ways security agents could record appreciable feat against the incessant killings by men suspected to be Fulani herdsmen, Balarabe Musa advised that the police and the Department of State Services (DSS) should work closely with rural community leaders to give information about herdsmen carrying sophisticated weapons.
“The activities of the Fulani herdsmen are criminal and they must be treated as criminals; there are no two ways about it. These set of Fulani are both from Nigeria and neighbouring countries. They also kill other innocent Fulani cattle breeders. The Fulani from other countries believe Nigeria is big and so they can come, make money and kill in the process,” he said.
“The police and other crime-fighting agencies must be alive to their responsibility concerning Fulani herdsmen this year. I am a victim of Fulani herdsmen and so, I know what it means. Two of my cows had been stolen at different times by these people.”
Musa explained that the setting-up of a commission of inquiry with members evenly drawn between both parties to look into the remote and proximate causes of the crisis would contribute to solving the problems.
He also confirmed that a combined team of soldiers and anti-riot policemen had been deployed in the area to maintain law and order following recent protests by people of the area over the killings.
A 24-hour curfew earlier imposed on the affected areas by the state government following the frequent attacks has since been reviewed. The State Security Council last week announced the partial relax of the curfew in Jema’a and Zangon-Kataf local councils to now last from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
The scourge of kidnapping
Kidnapping was a major crime in 2016 and years before it. Some notable Nigerians and were kidnapped and released after the payment of huge ransom.
Margaret Emefiele, wife of Godwin Emefiele, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, was kidnapped towards the last quarter of 2016 near Agbor, Delta State.
Despite an outrage over his kidnapping both locally and internationally, Reverend Father John Adeyi’s decomposed body was found in a bush at Odoba village in Otukpo area of Benue State. He was killed by his assailants in cold blood, despite receiving about N2 million from his family members.
Nigerians with long memory will not forget in a hurry how on September 21, 2015, Olu Falae, a former finance minister and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, was kidnapped by six Fulani herdsmen at his Ilado home in Akure, Ondo State. He was released after an undisclosed amount of ransom was paid by his family. The kidnappers initially asked for N100 million but later reduced it to N90 million.
On this list is Toyin Omosowon, regent of Akungba Akoko in Ondo State, who was kidnapped on June 5, 2015. The princess was reportedly kidnapped along Akure/Akungba-Akoko Express road while returning to the palace after attending an inaugural lecture by Igbekele Ajibefun, Vice Chancellor of Adekunle Ajasin University. She regained her freedom two weeks after through the joint effort of security agencies.
Similarly, James Adichie, a professor and father of US-based Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie, was abducted on May 2, 2015. An undisclosed amount of money was paid to the kidnappers before Adichie was freed.
In the year 2012, Mabel Titi Okonjo, mother of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Nigeria’s finance minister, was also abducted by a 10-man kidnap gang at Ogwashi-Ukwu, Delta state. Reports say the gang was paid a ransom of about N13 million before she was released five days after her abduction.
Josiah Umukoro, uncle to former President Goodluck Jonathan, was kidnapped in Bayelsa State; Hassan Garuba, a magistrate in Edo State, was also kidnapped. And in Lagos, three school girls of Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary, Ikorodu, had a six-day harrowing experience in the custody of kidnappers before they breathed the air of freedom.
Way out
Amechi Ifedinezi, managing director and chief executive officer, Janfics International Limited, said the Federal Government should immediately take steps to address the root causes of kidnapping and other crimes by dealing with the high unemployment in the country and ensuring that the Nigeria Police Force and other crime-fighting agencies are well funded, trained and equipped to deal with crime.
“Good investigation into alleged crimes, timely arrests of suspects and effective prosecution will go a long way in reducing kidnapping and other crimes,” he told BDSUNDAY.
NATHANIEL AKHIGBE
