There’s no doubt that Nigeria is tightly in the vice-like grip of kidnapping and ruthless killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen and other criminal elements. From the North West through the North Central to the South West, particularly, the fear of suspected Fulani bandits has become the beginning of wisdom for all travelers on the highways traversing this swathe of Nigeria.
Now, AK-47-wielding suspected Fulani bandits are having a field day across Nigeria in their nefarious and dastardly, but lethal game of kidnapping other citizens for ransom. Over 10,000 people were killed by Boko Haram insurgents, suspected Fulani herdsmen and kidnappers in 2018, according to a French Institute.
The current situation, no doubt, demands drastic practical action on the part of the government and its security apparatus.
Unfortunately, these criminal elements have naturally found accommodation in a permissive atmosphere, where the appropriate authorities have remained somewhat complacent, even in the face of wanton destruction caused to human lives by these bandits.
With the “hear-no-evil, see-no-evil” attitude of both the government and the security agencies regarding the activities of suspected Fulani bandits, it is natural that citizens living in the affected areas will resort to self-help to secure their lives. It is in the light of this dangerous development that the militant Oodua Peoples Congress and the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Iba Gani Adams, have expressed the readiness to secure the states of the South West against the rampaging suspected Fulani bandits and kidnappers.
OPC operatives and local hunters in Osun, the South West state, where the blood-chilling activities of the bandits have been more pronounced, have since been combing bushes and forests along the highways running through the state, especially the Ife-Ibadan Expressway, for the suspected Fulani bandits and other criminal elements terrorising travelers on the highways in the area.
Recently, the Aare Ona Kakanfo-in-Council led by Adams, had come out strongly against the activities of killer Fulani bandits and other criminal elements in Yorubaland. In a statement, the Aare Ona Kakanfo and his chiefs had sternly warned of reprisals should suspected Fulani bandits fail to put a halt to their “murderous activities and vacate every inch of Yorubaland they currently ravage.”
As commendable as this initiative by the OPC and the Aare Ona Kakanfo is, it is fraught with some dangers. It is susceptible to abuse. Over-zealous operatives can exploit the situation to carry out reprisals against perceived enemies, especially amongst members of the other ethnic groups residing in Yorubaland. In the same vein, ethnic militias in other parts of the country may hide under this arrangement to witch-hunt people of other ethnic stock living in their midst.
The request by the National President of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, Alhaji Mohammadu Kirowa, during the recent South East Security Summit in Enugu falls in the same category. According to MACBAN, the outfit will assist other security agencies in the South East, in addition to reporting their erring members to the proposed Fulani Youth Vigilance outfit and the association. Although there may be good intentions behind this MACBAN security proposal, it has naturally raised some suspicion because of the mutual distrust and suspicion existing among the different sections of the country, largely engendered by the lackadaisical attitude of the government to the rising wave of insecurity and the worrisome high incidence of kidnappings across the country.
The umbrella South East socio-political group, Ohaneze Ndigbo, and some other amorphous militant groups in the region have strongly voiced their opposition to this request by MACBAN, warning that it could be used as a ploy to escalate violence and kidnapping in the area. The reaction of the people of the South East to this strange request by Miyetti Allah is not a surprise. Organising such a security outfit to protect members of a particular ethnicity as demanded by MACBAN, in a strange land, naturally, gives room to the host community to be suspicious of the real intention of the non-indigenes.
One cannot but agree with the Aare Ona Kankanfo-in-Council that the Federal Government’s deafening silence on the murderous activities of suspected Fulani bandits and other criminals is somehow emboldening and encouraging the perpetrators. And this is frightening and troubling!
It is clear that the Federal Government, by its current seeming disinterest in reining in the suspected murderous Fulani bandits, is unwittingly setting the stage for chaos across the country. A situation where everybody resorts to self-defence, the country would be risking consequences that would ultimately be unpalatable for all citizens.
We believe that citizens’ resort to self-help or any form of self-defence constitutes an enormous challenge to security. It is an incontrovertible evidence of the monumental failure of the government and the inability of the country’s security architecture to protect citizens’ lives and property. It’s, indeed, a vote of no confidence in the country’s security architecture.
It is, however, unfortunate and highly dangerous that non-state actors like the OPC and the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria are proposing security strategies for the government. Intervention of ethnic militias and groups in the security situation is capable of introducing a dangerous dimension, which can aggravate the current insecurity in the country. To allow ethnic groupings and militias to take decisions on security means government is not alive to its responsibilities anymore.
When non-state actors begin to usurp the functions of the security agencies, then the country is fast being pushed to the edge of the precipice. Government cannot continue to shirk its responsibilities. Enough of the Ostrich play!
It is not enough for President Muhammadu Buhari to be effusive in sending condolences to the victims of crime. It is imperative that he takes practical action against all the perpetrators of insecurity and crimes across the country. Nigeria should not continue to remain enveloped with insecurity with a former military head of state, a retired Army general, who is also now the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, in the saddle. In the words of legendary novelist, Prof. Chinua Achebe, it takes a lion to tame a leopard. The President Buhari-led administration must, as a matter of course, rein in the killer herdsmen, kidnappers and Fulani bandits now!
