PEOPLES’ PARLIAMENT
The political class created the major problems of our nation. Stunted development is the outcome of narrow-mindedness, destruction of merit and lack of vision. Economic backwardness is a product of inability to think, and inability to reason is a major output of negative spiritualism. Contentious politics and insecurity are natural consequences of negative spiritualism, for those who don’t know, the main features of negative spiritualism include brute force and blind competition for everything including those things that are of no value, manipulation, cutting corners and subversion of rules and processes. This explains why we had genocide in Rwanda, and the farcical conflicts in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Congo, Bosnia, and other places where hundreds of persons died or die daily and many of us think it is normal war arising from genuine causes. Most bloody conflicts we have had in this nation where deliberately provoked to achieve narrow political ends, even the herdsmen menace is no exception. I just hope our politicians will spare a thought for this great nation, thank you. Last week’s discourse attracted huge response, they are presented below, happy reading!
These people are not Fulani herdsmen; what we are seeing is planned ethnic cleansing! Wake up. There is something bigger than those cows on your highways and forest! Never have we had as many cowards in the Nigerian media and “Civil Rights Movement” as we do today!! No voice of influence! Gone are the Ganis, the Dele Giwas… only those seeking federal appointment. Facebook and Twitter handle warriors remain. Cowards! The media won’t use the politically incorrect words such as “ethnic cleansing”, “mass murder” and “religious persecution” even though those are exactly the three things happening right now in Nigeria! And crazy self-seeking “men of God” are busy telling us to speak well of Nigeria because “our words are affecting Nigeria.” Nonsense! “Woe to those who call evil good,” declares the scripture. The foundation of God’s throne is righteousness and justice (Psalm 97). Life in the “Middle Belt” is almost snuffed out; there is zero protection for the Middle Belt either from Nigeria or African nations. The poor people of the Middle Belt sleep and wake up daily in the zip codes of death by “Fulani herdsmen.” The infiltration of ancestral lands of the East is complete! Their settlements and huts litter every forest in the eastern Nigeria. It is no different in Ogun and Ondo states. The rural lands of Edo State are soaked with their cow dung. It’s a well-articulated, well-funded mission! Even my small cassava farm back home was surrounded and the crops destroyed by AK47 wielding “Fulani herdsmen.” Who gave these illiterates such sophisticated weapons? Who trained them to use them? What is more? The constitutional backing for the “Fulani herdsmen” impunity is almost through at the National Assembly. It’s called the “National Grazing Reserves and Stock Routes” (for National read “Fulani”). That will officially allocate the Fulani our ancestral lands from Sokoto down to Port Harcourt and no one, not even your ancestral spirits will stop them thereafter. Very neat! And once your land is grabbed, your existence, your identity is expired…. because you can’t live in the atmosphere. You are not a bird. Right now whether Ogun, Abia, Ondo, Edo, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu or Benue, if your village makes the mistake of telling the Fulani herdsmen “don’t pass through our farmlands, you are destroying our crops or “stop raping our women” that is when you will understand the full wrath of the ogas at the top! Those boys know that “our own man is now in charge.” Wake up, we are at war – a government-backed war and this one is worse than the first because your legal defender is your murderer. People speak up! The hands of the clock are at 11:58am. Have you heard the word “referendum? That may be the only light in the tunnel now.
- Duruebube
The Fulani herdsmen were purposely armed to do what they are doing. It is a continuation of Ahmadu Bello’s thesis of the 60s. If not so, who armed them and why the surge of attacks now that their own is in power and why is it that no northern governor and politicians have condemned these attacks in the Middle Belt and South of the country? Formerly they grazed their cows along major highways. Why now in the farms? Write the truth, don’t dodge it and ask the right questions for the good of this country.
- Augustine Ukegbu – 08179430191
Sir, as you rightly said cattle rearing is a private business. As much as the Minister of Agriculture thinks of grazing reserves, he should also plan to establish piggeries where they are needed otherwise cows and pigs will clash. Fresh Problems. • 080551466606
The solution is for northern governors to build ranches for the herdsmen • Feyi Akeeb Kareem – 08098245620
Ralph, I shudder at government glossing over proactive suggestions on the country’s problems by some great minded columnists in the punts are set up specifically as megaphones of political parties, therefore their columnists are mere surrogates to their paymasters. Yet there are some news organs that are liberal in operations with their columnists given freehand to express their views unhindered. The Sun newspaper is such one, hence its compulsive patronage by discerning Nigerians. The major problem with failure of most of our leaders to read newspapers is hinged on their engaged aides being mere “errand boys” who simply do it the way their bosses order them to do. On the senseless killings by herdsmen, coupled with Buhari’s late response to their criminal acts, the nests have been stirred and only prompt restitution would prevent national implosion. God save us.
- Lai Ashadele – 07067677806
Killing under any circumstance should be abhorred. We don’t need grazing zones in the 36 states to solve the menace of hoodlums who go about killing innocent Nigerians under the guise of herdsmen, constructive engagement can put a stop to these senseless killings. Common sense will tell cattle rearers to avoid farms and farm settlements. It should be so in this case except if there is sinister motive, which I suspect very much.
•Mrs Victoria Chidinma Iwuagwu