When Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu declared a state of emergency on oil-rich Rivers State last week, the issue took over every waking minute of Nigerians at home and abroad.
Someday, historians are going to make a meal of the various views, declarations and subterfuges at play. By the time the true story of what transpired is fully told, most, if not all the dramatis personae, would have been long dead. What will outlive them is the verdict of history.
But that is still, hopefully, a long way ahead. There is another state of emergency which has been begging to be declared for quite a while. It has festered because the attitude of those in government seemed to indicate that the monster would die a natural death if left unchallenged. Now, the monster of insecurity raging under the mask of armed herdsmen is sweeping from the North through the Middle Belt to the Southwest of Nigeria.
Undeclared War
There is an undeclared war going on in the Southwest between unarmed farmers and fully-armed bandits disguised as herdsmen. Before this current upsurge, conspiracy theorists had predicted that as the Southwest was the most peaceful and most economically vibrant part of the country, some hired killers would soon invade the region to, first, threaten food security and second depopulate the area.
Now, how would one describe the recent cold-blooded murder of five farmers by armed herdsmen at Aba Oyinbo in Akure North Local Government Area of Ondo State, two weeks after murdering 20 farmers in four farm settlements in the same local government area? The local community said they had had enough and invaded the governor’s office in Akure to seek answers.
If there’s a mastermind behind the recent scourge of banditry, kidnapping and outright mass murders inflicted on innocent farmers, rural folk, commuters and community leaders in the Southwest, that evil genius must rank very highly in Hades and counterpart infernal regions. It is all too well planned and executed to be accidental. Anyone with a little knowledge of geography will readily plot the graph of the movement of the killing bands from one part of the country to another. The ensuing pattern will reveal a carefully hatched campaign of violence by gangs of terrorists who have converted forests nationwide to their killing fields.
Three years ago, the innocence of Owo town in Ondo State was breached by mass murderers who invaded a Catholic Church on a Sunday morning and gunned down at least 40 worshippers. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of blessed memory cast protocol aside as he stood dolefully on the altar facing the array of victims’ coffins and fired a teary salvo: “We have failed to defend these people… Not because we have not tried, but because these forces on the other side are evil and they have support. They will not triumph over us forever!” Akeredolu warned that the Federal Government’s inability to secure life and property in the country would soon leave citizens with no choice but to arm themselves in self-defence.
He later announced the ban on herdsmen and their cattle from Ondo State forests because of their engagement in criminal activities. The Federal Government, which had been helpless in protecting the people, suddenly found its voice. It cautioned that the state government could not expel Nigerian citizens whose right to reside and exercise their livelihoods anywhere in the country was protected by the Constitution. That posture has fuelled the agitation of several separatist groups in the Southwest who argue that the dismantling of Nigeria is the only way to ensure self-preservation.
Para-Security
Shortly after that massacre, the Amotekun security outfit was operationalised. As usual, high ranking officials of the Muhammadu Buhari government opposed the request of some states to establish armed security bodies of their own, claiming that there were already too many guns in circulation. But what manner of federation is this where some vandals are allowed to carry weapons as part of their costume while everyone else must simply run for cover or buy their way out when kidnapped?
In November 2020, in addition to the economic and security dimensions of the problem, marauding bandits further breached traditional mores and taboos with the slaying of a prominent traditional ruler in Ondo State, the Olufon of Ifon, Oba Israel Adeusi. The royal father was shot at Elegbeka community along the Ifon-Benin Highway.
Ondo State lies entirely in the tropics. It is bounded in the North by Ekiti/Kogi State; in the East by Edo State; in the West by Oyo and Ogun States and in the South by the Atlantic Ocean. Strategically therefore, it is a state that links the Southwest to the North and the Southeast and has the capacity for international commerce and maritime travel through the Atlantic Ocean.
The authorities are certainly aware of the gravity of the current situation as evidenced by the recent call by the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, on his troops to rise collectively and fight kidnapping, banditry, and other criminal activities which were becoming rampant in the Southwest as the terrorists migrated southwards.
Gani Adams, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland had called on the governors of the Southwest not to treat the security threats posed by the herdsmen as isolated incidents because there are no physical boundaries in the forests.
“Apart from the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), there are still over 10 private security groups known as the Southwest Security Stakeholders Group (SSSG) under my leadership and we are ready to flush terrorists and bandits out of Yorubaland with the collaboration of all the governors in the region,” says Adams.
All the para-security organisations which have spoken to the media are also convinced that they can stamp out banditry and kidnapping if given the necessary legal and logistic backing of the state governments and traditional rulers.
Stop The Madness
The nation waits with bated breath for the federal government’s promised intervention with modern ranching to replace the medieval wandering from forest to forest currently practiced by the herdsmen. The establishment of state police is also still a dream.
All men and women of goodwill all over the country want the wanton killings orchestrated by bands of murderous bandits stopped nationwide – whether it is in Sokoto, Kano, Enugu, Owo, Yenagoa, Gboko or Ibadan. The danger of the continued terror of armed herdsmen outside their home territories is that as the years go by, all members of their tribe are unfairly profiled as terrorists and treated as such.
But not all Fulani people are terrorists! You try and say that to the indigenes of a town whose traditional ruler, second only to the gods, is picked up like a common dog on the highway, gasping in the pool of his own blood. This unspeakable horror is happening in the Yoruba region where the indigenes have historically had hundreds of years of interaction with cattle herding Fulani without stress. If you can’t read between the lines, may your soul rest in peace.
As popular singer, Asha, famously crooned:
There’s fire on the mountain
And nobody seems to be on the run
There is fire on the mountain top
And no one is a-running…
Before we all start running helter-skelter, I hereby beg to move for the declaration of a State of Emergency on Security.
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