In October 2000 when General Muhammadu Buhari literally paralysed the Oyo State Government Secretariat with numerous ‘lorry loads’ of angry Fulani cattle rearers, his grievance, as he told the Oyo State Governor Lam Adesina, was that “Fulani cattle herdsmen and merchants are today being harassed, attacked, and killed like in Saki. In the month of May 2000, 68 bodies of Fulani cattle ‘rearers’ were recovered and buried…some arrests were made…in the massacre and they were immediately released without court trial. This was said to have been ordered by Oyo State authorities. The release of the suspects gave the clear impression that the authorities are backing and protecting them to continue the unjust and illegal killings of Fulani cattle herdsmen…”
Governor Adesina tried to reassure the general and called the heads of the Federal agencies in the state to give their assessment. The Police Commissioner spoke first to the effect that Gen. Buhari must have been misinformed, his figures exaggerated. The Director of the Department of State Security (DSS) spoke at length and stated that “…you (Gen Buhari) said 68 people were killed and people driven away. I am not saying there were no killings, but they cannot be more than five.”
Eighteen years after this notable encounter, Gen. Buhari has now been president for three years. Within this period thousands of Nigerians have been massacred by the same Fulani cattle herdsmen for whom he was ready to go to war in Oyo State, even though, as the DSS chief stated, the Fulani cattle herdsmen killed “cannot be more than five.”
Last Monday, Nigeria’s This Day newspaper attempted to compute the casualties of the carnage. The number of those murdered in the Middle Belt region alone in the first four months of the year was put at 901. The figure does not include the casualties recorded in Boko Haram attacks which were predominantly confined to the North East region. It also excludes the killings by herdsmen in other states of Nigeria, some of which took place in Ebonyi, Delta, Edo and Enugu states. The highest casualty rate in the Middle Belt was recorded in April when a total of 412 people were killed, followed by January when 272 persons were murdered. In March 162 deaths were recorded and in February, the lowest figure for the dead was 62.
If other Nigerian leaders had done what President Buhari did in the year 2000, if they had decided to mobilize thousands of Nigerians, the bereaved and the angry, each time 64 persons were killed, throngs of aggrieved Nigerians ought to have paid the president at least 15 visits this year alone. They in turn would have occupied the Aso Villa premises and used the opportunity to give the president a piece of their mind, and to express their revulsion for the ‘I-don’t-care’ attitude of the president to the carnage. They would have also noted that the Buhari government’s unwillingness to arrest the perpetrators gave the clear impression that the authorities are backing and protecting the Fulani herdsmen to continue the unjust and illegal killings of innocent rural farmers and other Nigerians.
In the year 2000, President Buhari alleged that the killers were arrested but were quickly released without court trial. Since the last three years since he became president, with thousands of Nigerians killed and hundreds of villages burnt, not more than a handful of arrests have been made, but not a single published prosecution, to say nothing of a conviction followed.
It soon became clear that the government was not thinking of how to halt the slaughter when the president and his spokesmen began to describe of the carnage as “clashes between farmers and herdsmen.” There was not a single instance of a clash between herdsmen and farmers. In almost all cases, the farmers were attacked in the dead of the night or at dawn in their homes by herdsmen armed with assault weapons. The farmers who survived the initial onslaught always fled with nothing, before their homes were then set on fire, rendering them homeless refugees. The government would then express sympathy to the survivors and promise to arrest the perpetrators. No one can still count the number of times the government made such promises. Not one was fulfilled.
The government began to cast for excuses. First it said that the freedom of movement which the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) protocol grants has opened our borders so wide that many non-Nigerian herders were the cause of the mayhem. This could not be true because ECOWAS protocol could not possibly divest the Federal Government of its power and authority to maintain law and order within the borders of Nigeria. Secondly, there was not a single arrest of such non-Nigerian herders to at least give the excuse some credence.
The newest and most fantastic of the excuses is the Gaddafi terrorist theory, which the President peddled even in the United States. The late colonel had trained and armed the terrorists and after his death, the terrorists, not finding a better occupation, then joined the herders. The president has not explained the relationship. Apparently the Gaddafi people served as the militia of the Myetti Allah since they could not possibly be the owners of the cattle.
Some of the president’s helpers also sold the climate change hypothesis and how the fate of Lake Chad became the origin of the carnage. The struggle of the herdsmen and the farmers was for water and pasture. Climate change has claimed 90 per cent of the water supply and vegetation in the Lake Chad region thereby unleashing such a deadly competition between the two groups. The trouble with the climate change excuse is that the Lake Chad area is the operational territory of Boko Haram. There is no dispute as to how the lake has shrunk in the last 25 years. The herdsmen carnage got worse in the last five years and thus the lake’s fate cannot be a necessary and sufficient explanation.
The calls by the National Assembly and many Nigerians that the president should dismiss his service chiefs assume that the President’s unwillingness to act was due to shortage of ideas. There is no evidence of such needs. A few suspicions have been floating on why the president has refused to act, including being seen as weak by his Fulani kinsmen who glory in his power. But last week, the National Economic Council presided over by the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo resolved to stop the movement of cattle in Benue, Taraba, Adamawa, Kaduna and Plateau states. The announcement was made by the Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi, who added that the five most affected states were expected to make land available to the herders for ranches. Apparently, the government has given up on its earlier proposal for a cattle colony. What happens in the next few weeks would determine if the ‘cease movement’ order would work or join other similar rules that never made any impression on the blood lust of Fulani herdsmen.