You must have noticed that the un-educative but meant-to-distract programmes like Big Brother, as well as media trial of certain opposition members to the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government, including former minister of petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, or even the National Security Adviser to former President Godluck Jonathan, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), among certain ‘fight corruption’ postures of the present government no longer distract the people from the real issues in the land?
They are instead asking for non selective and proper trial of anyone found guilty of any offense, irrespective of what political party or ethnic group he/she belongs to.
Right now, what is actually ‘distracting’ is the sequence of killings of innocent Nigerians by bandits and terrorist, and the fact that before one can even comprehend one tragic incident, many more are breaking not far away.
Surely but slowly, the truth is hitting hard on the Nigerian people, which is the high rate of insecurity in the land. Every Nigerian, including those that had earlier lost their senses to the ‘spirit of change’ and body language, is gradually coming to terms with the fact that the country is sliding, and dangerously too. And if nothing is done urgently to arrest the situation, the ship of nation may just sink.
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Not only are Nigerians now reduced to the status of the poorest people on earth, moving around their own country also has become a deadly venture. As a matter of fact, insecurity is gradually becoming the other name for a country once said to have harboured the happiest people on earth. The situation has gotten so bad that members of the international community are so busy issuing travel alerts to their nationals living in or travelling into Nigeria on where and how not to travel.
Going by daily occurrences, it would appear the country is held hostage by a gang of terrorists. We may choose to call them Boko Haram, herdsmen of any ethnic affiliation, kidnappers, cultists or bandits, but one thing is certain, these terrorists or bandits are having a free ride in the country.
Innocent Nigerians are being terrorized daily by these agents of darkness, who freely kill, maim, burn down communities, chase away surviving victims from their ancestral homes with nothing and sometimes nowhere to go to. Most painfully is the fact that more often than not, no one is apprehended.
And so, as the killings are going on in Zamfara, so also are they happening in Kaduna, Katsina, Borno, Yobe, Kogi, Plateau and many other states of the north as well as the south.
Indeed, Nigerians have never before witnessed this level of insecurity, such that in peace time, it would seem more people are being killed than in war times, even when we hear of huge amount of money being set aside for the fight against insurgency. Or how do we explain that about four million Nigerians are now displaced in their own country in addition to thousands that lose their lives, needlessly?
Violence between Nigerian herders and farmers has in addition to the Boko Haram menace, escalated, and now responsible for the death of more than 1,300 people since January 2018. The conflict is said to have evolved from spontaneous reactions to provocations and now to deadlier planned attacks, particularly in Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, Nasarawa and Taraba states. And it is still spreading!
Heart-breaking pictures of wailings, gnashing of teeth by Nigerians generally running away from their homes following attacks by the gangs of bandits/terrorists we were once told to have come from foreign lands, confront us daily, to the extent it has become so depressing for many to watch or read local news reports, where what dominates are mostly stories on wanton killings that leave one questioning the real worth of the life of an average Nigerian.
Naturally, when there are so many problems all over the place, next thing is to be overwhelmed by them and when such happens, attention is shifted to things that are merely cosmetics, or things that have no bearing on the well being of the future or the issues at hand.
So, a 58-year old woman returning from a visit to her 94-year-old father was hacked down by gunmen suspected to be herdsmen and rather than squarely face the issue and fish out the murderers, discussions are being slanted to demonize those claiming that she was murdered by Fulani herdsmen.
And I dare say that whether she was killed by Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, Senegalese, Chadian, Gambian or Ijaw herdsmen, the killing last week of Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, daughter of Afenifere chieftain, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, is a clear indication that no one is safe from the abyss the country is drifting into, if we as a people do not rise up against evil, no matter where and who is perpetrating it.
There is no doubting the fact that farmer-herder conflict has become Nigeria’s gravest security challenge, now claiming far more lives than the Boko Haram insurgency. It has displaced hundreds of thousands and sharpened ethnic, regional and religious polarization. What were once spontaneous attacks have become premeditated scorched-earth campaigns in which marauders often take villages by surprise at night. Now claiming about six times more civilian lives than the Boko Haram insurgency, the conflict today, poses a grave threat to the country’s stability and unity.
Mrs. Olakunrin was reportedly attacked and shot by suspected herdsmen in Ondo state, while traveling on the Ore road after visiting her father.
Spokesman for Afenifere, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, who first made this public in a message to a national daily penultimate Friday, said she was coming from Akure when the ‘armed Fulani herdsmen’ came from the bush to attack her and other vehicles. According to him, her domestic staff in the car with her also sustained gunshots, insisting that “This is one death too many and a clear we-can-take-it-no-more death.”
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The tragic incident has since generated discordant reactions across the country, which goes to further heat the polity, all of which boils to the fact that the nation’s security challenge needs to be urgently addressed.
One of the prominent and strong voices speaking up against the looming disaster is that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who through another letter to President Muhammadu Buhari last week, warned that Nigeria is tipping towards a dangerous cliff and that only the president could forestall such.
The letter dated July 15, 2019, and released by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, three days after Mrs. Olakunrin was killed, was made open so that the president could seek assistance from some of those that will read it to get a handle on the security situation in the country, which Obasanjo described as a momentous concern to all well-meaning and all right-thinking Nigerians.
He affirmed in the letter that when people are desperate and feel that they cannot have confidence in the ability of government to provide security for their lives and properties, they will take recourse to anything and everything that can guarantee their security individually and collectively.
He reiterated the fact that for over ten years, four of which President Buhari has called the shots, Boko Haram has menacingly ravaged the land and in spite of government’s claim of victory over it, the potency and activities of the deadly group, where they are active, remain undiminished, thus putting a lie to government’s claim of its defeat.
And as rightly pointed, the menace of herdsmen/farmers crises started with the government treating the issue with cuddling glove instead of a hammer just as the main issue of the nation’s security challenge today is a fallout of poor management or mismanagement of diversity, which happens to be one of the nation’s greatest and most important assets.
And less than 24 hours after ex-President Obasanjo raised the alarm on the insecurity in the land, former President Goodluck Jonathan, during a condolence visit to Pa Fasoranti in Akure, Ondo state capital, also lent his voice to the issue. Although he mentioned no names, Jonathan clearly challenged the government headed by his successor to come up with new strategies to tackle insecurity, adding that one could not continue doing old things and expect new results.
But President Buhari in what apparently was a reply to Obasanjo’s letter, without mentioning any names, either, believes those criticising the “isolated cases” of insecurity in the country are not patriotic, stating, in another development also that security remained at the apex of his priorities.
And as debate on the deteriorating security situation rages, the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and the Coalition of the Northern Groups (CNGs) would add another dimension to it by ordering Fulani herdsmen to leave the Southern parts of the country and return to the north where their safety and those of their cows, they said, are guaranteed. This was following what they described as war threats by Southern leaders against the Fulani herders.
Though the president has asked them to ignore the call since they, like any other Nigerian, have the right to live in any part of the country, but that is not enough. To put an end to this rising conflict and stop the bloodshed, the president must be seen to be doing things that would protect both the herders and farmers, as well as prosecute attackers, no matter who they are. Government must also carry out its National Livestock Transformation Plan in a way and manner that does not encroach on the rights of the other.