Fear In Nigeria

Mr. President, very many Nigerians live in fear - letter

Editor’s note: Following the a spate of deadly attacks this year blamed on Fulani herdsmen President Muhammadu Buhari has directed a military crackdown on the group. However, the attacks continue. A concerned Nigerian writes to President Buhari, asking to find the lasting solution to the problem as Nigerians live in fear.

Nobody is sure where and when the sudden attacks will come Dear President Buhari, in the light of the on-going Fulani herdsmen’s killings and destructions in many places in our country, many of us Nigerians are living in fear. In most of our rural countryside, our farmers and their families are afraid to do their accustomed work on the farms. Across our country, farms, the handwork and means of livelihood of our farmers and their families, are being destroyed by roving cattle. When farmers’ families go to sleep in the night these days, they are no longer sure whether their farms will be there in the morning, or whether the cattle 

herds would have wiped out everything during the night. They are no longer sure whether their villages will be allowed to sleep peacefully through the night, or whether the killer herdsmen will come in the dark, kill villagers, destroy and burn the houses, and rape the women and girls. Nobody is sure where and when the sudden attacks will come, or what the magnitude of the killings and devastations will be. State governments, local governments, and traditional rulers, all are unsure what to do to protect their people. One governor burst into tears when he saw the scene of rampage in a village in his state. The call for agricultural growth

The situation is desperate, Mr. President. As you very well know, we seriously need to improve agricultural productivity in this country. To that end, most authorities and leaders of our country have been trying to encourage our people to return to the land. Since you became president, you have repeatedly contributed your very influential voice to the call for agricultural growth. And you have made it a priority in your policies, plans and programmes. In many parts of our country, especially in most of our southern states, the return to farming is still very slow and very hesitant. But now, the Fulani herdsmen are scaring farmers away from the farms. A very major disaster is being enacted.

In response to the disaster, a whirlwind of agitated comments and cries is sweeping through most of our country. To allow these fears and this whirlwind to continue is inimical to the well-being of this country. It could even wreck this country – and lead to its collapse. Mr. President, you must take steps without delay to bring this dangerous situation to a satisfactory end. We need to have a definitive and lasting solution. Merely ordering the Nigerian military and police to stop these herdsmen from attacking farmers and villagers, as you have done, is not enough. As long as these killer herdsmen remain, and as long as important questions about them remain unexplained, the wild and inflammatory speculations will continue to shake Nigeria. Who really are these so-called Fulani herdsmen We Nigerians need, want, and demand, to have answers to many questions concerning this situation. Who really are these so-called Fulani herdsmen? From official and non-official sources, we are getting loads of information about their identity, about why they are behaving as they are now behaving, and about the sources of their strength. We are told that these people are ordinary nomadic cattle herdsmen. We are also told that the recent civil commotions in the Maghreb (especially in Libya) makes it easy to get sophisticated weapons in the Sahel parts of West Africa, as a result of which these herdsmen have been able to acquire even such highly sophisticated guns as AK47. But, how do ordinary nomadic herdsmen afford to buy expensive things like AK47 rifles? How are they able to train to use such sophisticated weapons? The suspicion is being voiced in the media that some rich and influential Nigerian citizens have been supplying the herdsmen with these weapons, and training the herdsmen to use them. If yes, who are these rich and influential Nigerian citizens? What are these rich and influential Nigerian citizens trying to achieve? You, Mr. President, were recently reported to have revealed in an interview with CNN in London that some of these herdsmen are really Libyan militiamen, trained under Ghadafi, well-armed and well-trained fighters who fled southwards to West Africa after the fall of Ghadafi. If so, how did these militiamen become cattle herdsmen in Nigeria? Who gave them thousands of cattle to herd?

You said in the interview, Sir, that these militiamen have become an Africa-wide problem. Why has the government of Nigeria never informed Nigeria about this problem? What steps has the Nigerian government taken to prevent the problem from coming into Nigeria or to expel it from Nigeria? If no step, why? Why have some prominent Fulani leaders been representing these militiamen to us as merely Fulani herdsmen and claiming Nigerian citizens’ rights for them – even though they must know that they are, in fact, extremely dangerous Libyan killers? Why have some Fulani spokesmen been threatening that they would break up Nigeria if these Libyan militiamen are thrown out of Nigeria? What does the Nigerian government intend to do about that? Do we now have the president’s word that Nigeria is under invasion by Libyan militiamen? And, what does the Nigerian government intend to do about that? A highly placed citizen from the Middle Belt, Governor Balarabe Musa, warned in 2014 that a new insurgency was in the offing – a new insurgency different from Boko Haram, better organized, better armed and much more dangerous than Boko Haram, and planned by some highly influential Nigerians for the purpose of achieving some major political objective in Nigeria. Are we now seeing part of that insurgency? Some Arewa North citizens have threatened again and again in recent years that the North would go to war rather than accept certain kinds of change in Nigeria. And they have also repeatedly assured us that the North is more ready for war than the South. In the background of these threats, there have been repeated reports in the media since 2012 that large quantities of arms are being illegally imported into Nigeria. Are today’s depredations by the Fulani herdsmen part of what these various members of the Northern elite have been threatening? Are the Libyan militiamen part of a mercenary army that some influential Nigerians have hired to wage war against some parts and peoples of Nigeria?

Some Northerners are frenetically demanding “grazing reserves” for the herdsmen. Some are threatening that we Southerners will find ourselves in greater danger if we refuse to grant land for such grazing reserves. Some say that they will break up Nigeria if the herdsmen are refused entry into Southern Nigeria. We Southerners suspect a hidden agenda for these grazing reserves. What are the true purposes of the grazing reserves?  Are they designed by some people to house illegal armies of occupation in the states of the Middle Belt and the South, for the purpose of intimidating the peoples of those places? Are they meant to be jihadist instruments for forcible Islamization? Are they designed as weapons of one ethnic group’s conquest of Nigeria? Mr. President, you owe Nigeria clear, truthful, and statesmanlike answers and explanations on this situation. More importantly, you owe Nigeria policies and actions that will remove this horrible threat from our country – in the interest of the peace and existence of our country. We Nigerians pledge our strongest support to such policies and actions when you design and implement them. But delay is dangerous.

Written by Clement Ejiofor

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