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In 2002 when he first went public with his House of Nigeria F.R.E.S.H., which eventually metamorphosed into Fresh Democratic Party, Chris Okotie, pastor, Household of God Church International Ministries, told the story of a certain man in an unnamed town who went to bed at night and while he slept, robbers broke into his home and carted away some of his belongings. When he woke up in the morning, the man went straight to the palace of the ruler of the town and asked to have back his stolen belongings.
“When you came asking for my support to become the ruler of this town, you promised that you would watch over me and guarantee the safety of my life and property. That was why I went to sleep thinking that you would be there watching over me,” the man told the ruler.
That the primary responsibility of government is to guarantee the security of lives and property of its citizens is a moot point. The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) explicitly states in Chapter 2, section 14, subsection 2(b), “The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” When a government fails in this primary duty, of what use, then, is that government? And what right has that government, or the party it represents, to go out to ask for the citizens’ votes in the next elections?
This is even more so for the President Muhammadu Buhari administration which made security one of the three cardinal anchors of its campaign during the 2015 general election. When he took office on May 29, 2015, Buhari reiterated his determination to tackle insecurity as well as myriad other problems confronting the country when he said, “Insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel and power shortages are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us.”
The reality, however, is that many Nigerians, particularly citizens and residents of Nigeria’s north-central states of Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba and Plateau – as well as down south up to Enugu, Delta, Edo, Ondo and Ekiti – are today biting their fingers in regret that they ever gave their votes to a government that has not only failed to secure their lives and property but has also continued to look the other way while they are mowed down by so-called Fulani herdsmen.
Even though staunch supporters of the Buhari administration, especially members of his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), continue to tout the administration’s so-called achievements in the area of security, the word on the street is that the present government has failed abysmally on that score. Whatever little the government has achieved in the area of fight against Boko Haram insurgency has been eroded by its failure or reluctance to tackle the menace of the rampaging, blood-thirsty Fulani herdsmen who have turned the Middle Belt into killing fields.
Many prominent Nigerians, including Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former military President Ibrahim Babangida, Emeritus Archbishop of Lagos Catholic Archdiocese Anthony Cardinal Okogie, and a host of others have been drawing attention to the killings in the Middle Belt and the Buhari administration’s apparent reluctance to put a stop to the carnage. Indeed, the government’s lackadaisical response to the killings has fuelled suspicion that the marauders are acting out a script that either has the president’s imprimatur or tacit support.
Only on March 24, at the maiden convocation ceremony of Taraba State University in Jalingo, the state capital, Theophilus Danjuma, a former minister of defence, called on Nigerians to rise and defend themselves against attacks by marauding herdsmen or continue to suffer casualties.
“You must rise to protect yourselves from these people; if you depend on the armed forces to protect you, you will all die. I ask all of you to be on the alert and defend your country, defend your state,” Danjuma said.
He accused the military authorities of complicity in the violent killings, which he tagged “ethnic cleansing”, warning that the killings “must stop now otherwise Somalia will be a child’s play”.
To be fair, the killings in the Middle Belt had been going on before Buhari assumed power in May 2015. In a January 5, 2015 article in BusinessDay, Obadiah Mailafia, a former deputy governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), painted a gory picture of what he termed “the silent holocaust in the Middle Belt”, “a silent war against an unarmed and defenceless people”.
At a time the world’s attention was focused on the deadly Boko Haram insurgency mostly in the northeast states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, Mailafia drew attention to an ongoing “equally pernicious and deadly holocaust…in the Middle Belt; in the ancestral savannah of Adamawa, Plateau, Taraba, Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa and Benue”, much of which, he said, went unreported.
“The term ‘Fulani marauders’ has been used to describe these invisible hordes. In reality, they are highly sophisticated and well-armed mercenaries, most of them from neighbouring countries. They kill and maim without mercy; highly mobile bandits who move about in the bushes, lurking to pounce upon their victims in the primeval darkness like bloodthirsty hounds,” Mailafia wrote.
“Ambush and surprise are their stock-in-trade. They specialise in dawn raids, moving with speed; a guerrilla army without a clear political cause other than Jihad and mayhem. Once they descend upon a village, they would first torch it with petrol and fire; as children and women scamper out, they would then descend upon them with guns, bayonets and swords; a people devoid of mercy or humanity,” he said.
The unrestrained killing spree has, however, intensified since May 2015 when President Buhari assumed office. Ever since then, there have been almost daily tales of one coordinated attack after another, each with high casualty rate, massive devastation of farmlands and displacement of the people in their thousands in the affected states. The recent decision of the killers to invade worship centres may have added a dangerous and frightening dimension to an already bad situation.
That these attacks have continued unabated is a big issue in itself. However, it is the government’s half-hearted or utter lack of response to the killings that has been the major bone of contention. Despite the appeals made to Buhari and the security apparatchik to halt the orgy of killings in Benue in particular and rein in the perpetrators, the situation is rather degenerating and nobody, none of those saddled with the responsibility of protecting lives and property, has been sanctioned for failure to do what they were supposed to do.
Governor Samuel Orton of Benue State has exhausted his strength appealing to Abuja to rise to its responsibility. The National Assembly has screamed blue murder over the senseless killings in the North-Central and the lacklustre response of the government towards stemming the ugly tide. But all these seem to have fallen on deaf ears, with the government and its officials constantly changing the narrative to further compound the issues.
Ayo Opadokun, a pro-democracy activist and former secretary of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), who spoke with BDSUNDAY recently, expressed serious concern over the deafening silence from the Federal Government in the midst of widespread killings.
“I never imagined that it will come in my life time that the Nigerian security and intelligence will fail abysmally and will pretentiously not to be able to deter herdsmen from killing and exterminating communities from their land and taking over their land and the Nigerian state has failed to be able to stop it and stamp it out completely in spite of the loud promises made by President Buhari,” Opadokun lamented.
Opadokun, who said he invested his time and resources in 2015 into the campaign to bring the APC government on board, wondered why the Nigerian presidency had consciously attracted so much distrust to itself, with the defence minister, internal affairs minister and Inspector-General of Police claiming that the events in Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa and Adamawa were communal clashes.
“Ordinarily, if there is sense of justice, equity and fairness; in this age, if there was nothing behind it; if there was nothing more to it; if there were no personal interests residing in the Nigerian security and intelligence and the presidency, all those ones ought to have been retired immediately to assure Nigerians that we are still together,” Opadokun said.
“But come to think of it, how will that happen when you have a Nigerian security council where the president who presides over is from Katsina; the director of state security is from Katsina, and you also now have the newly appointed director-general of National Intelligence Agency also from Katsina. With all these, how can other people from other parts of the country be assured that they are safe?” he queried.
But while the Buhari administration has more or less treated the killings as a featherweight issue, the president has preferred to concentrate on his 2019 re-election bid.
Barely two weeks ago, for instance, while the people of Benue State mourned the early morning killing of about 20 worshippers, including two Catholic priests, at St. Ignatius Quasi Parish, Ukpor, Mbalom in Gwer West Local Government Area of the state, by herdsmen on Tuesday, April 25, Buhari was busy at the Presidential Villa, Abuja meeting with state governors elected on the platform of APC specifically to get them work towards the emergence of Adams Oshiomhole, a former governor of Edo State, as the party’s next national chairman. Oshiomhole is believed to have the clout to mobilise massive support for Buhari in the 2019 presidential election.
Two days later, Buhari was also in Bauchi State ostensibly to commission some projects, but also to campaign for votes in 2019.
Political analysts, however, say that in saner climes, the 2019 general election would have been won and lost on the back of the unbridled massacres across the country. They argue that the heightened insecurity across the country, especially the killings in the north-central states, is enough to dislodge any government in any part of the world and stop it from seeking a second term.
While admitting that it is the APC’s right to aspire to continue to rule, and it is President Buhari’s right as a citizen to seek a second term in office, they add that it is also the electorates’ rights to say ‘Never Again’!
The analysts believe that indigenes of Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba, Plateau and other affected states, as well as the generality of Nigerians, have in their hands the instrument with which to effect a change in 2019.
“A government that has not been able to perform the least of its responsibility, which is protecting lives and property, but is busying itself campaigning for a return can only be said to be insensitive and has lost the true meaning and essence of leadership,” a political analyst, who does not want his name in print, told BDSUNDAY.
“In saner climes, the party in power would have no chance of returning. The electorates in the north-central states of Benue, Taraba, Plateau and Nasarawa would have stopped their ears from hearing any campaign jingle from the ruling party, and Nigerians in other parts of the country would have toed the same line in sympathy with the Middle Belt people,” the analyst said.
ZEBULON AGOMUO & CHUKS OLUIGBO
