Benue State is literally burning, with hundreds of indigenes being wantonly and savagely massacred almost every month by marauding Fulani herdsmen. Yet, in the face of such unprecedented atrocities against innocent and unarmed citizens by murderous and terrorizing bands of nomads and their suspected mercenaries, neither the PDP government of Gabriel Suswam nor the one at the federal level led by Jonathan has shown any level of seriousness or adequate concern aimed at putting a definitive stop to the carnage, not to mention helping the victims by, amongst other things, making sure that the culprits are arrested and brought to justice. This state of affairs is totally unacceptable.
Benue State is literally burning, with hundreds of indigenes being wantonly and savagely massacred almost every month by marauding Fulani herdsmen. Yet, in the face of such unprecedented atrocities against innocent and unarmed citizens by murderous and terrorizing bands of nomads and their suspected mercenaries, neither the PDP government of Gabriel Suswam nor the one at the federal level led by Jonathan has shown any level of seriousness or adequate concern aimed at putting a definitive stop to the carnage, not to mention helping the victims by, amongst other things, making sure that the culprits are arrested and brought to justice. This state of affairs is totally unacceptable.
Also unacceptable is the pernicious narrative by individuals or groups like the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association whose chillingly haughty, rabid, primordial and often knee-jerk pronouncements have tended to either trivialize the massacres and suffering being inflicted by the Fulani herdsmen or acted as apparent impetus to the perpetrators of the orgies of atavistic mayhem against the people of Benue. And the peace-loving citizens of the state also unequivocally reject the dangerous agenda of what are effectively terrorist and illegal seizures and occupation of Benue State territory by Fulanis armed with AK-47 assault rifles. It’s worth observing that these terrorist seizures and settlements of Benue farm lands are coinciding with and are indeed the main objective of the orchestrated attacks and killings by these well-armed herdsmen.
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The Miyetti Allah Association and other backers or sympathizers of the latter must be told in no uncertain terms that they are being obnoxious and unhelpful when they futilely and irrationally seek to defend the Fulani aggressors by mischievously and arrogantly harping on the so-called “grazing rights” as an alibi for the deadly assaults by them in Benue State. The irresponsible and single-minded obsession with “grazing reserves” does betray a mindset that is dismissive of serious existentialist concerns like the right to life of members of indigenous communities and related issues which the bestial encroachments by Fulani herdsmen are trampling on.
The colonialist orientation of the rampaging itinerants and their Miyetti Allah Association supporters does also reveal a dogmatic, if blind refusal on their part to consider modernist, less socially destabilizing approaches to breeding cattle and other livestock that would require the herdsmen to remain in their states of origin and not constitute threats to national security, not to mention the fact that their violent, scorched earth onslaughts are tantamount to an agenda of orchestrated pogroms against host communities whose economic and commercial life is being profoundly disrupted or destroyed by their criminal activities.
Escapist and flippant, the grazing reserves mantra is also a piece of cultural cum philosophical fossils. Its unbending anachronism can be said to preach a form of political and administrative rascality by seeking to divest states or societies of origin of the primary responsibility to efficaciously provide for their citizens in ways and means that take into account current developmental trends. In stark terms, it is ethically, politically and fiscally repugnant, to say the least, to impose on Benue State and its people, the awesome and debilitating responsibility of depleting their meager resources (land, water, food, financial, etc.) that can barely meet the vital needs of their growing communities, not to mention the palpably harmful instability-related consequences of subjecting them to criminal, armed and unwelcome occupation.
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The Benue State government, its people as well as the federal authorities and all men and women of goodwill must act immediately to dispel the legitimate fears in some quarters that the barbaric and bloody incursions by predominantly Muslim herdsmen do signal a strategy of invidious land grabs – precursor to a latter-day enterprise of Islamist proselytization and hegemony (cultural, linguistic, economic, political and otherwise) in the minority Christian state of the Middle Belt. History has shown that any unbridled and uncontrolled forms of settlements by intruders (especially those that bear arms and are animated by religious zealotry, overt or subtle) do invariably overwhelm the indigenous or host populations to the point of irremediably destroying the socio-economic levers that hitherto acted as a necessary equilibrium for social peace and order. One only needs to look at Plateau State to understand what is at stake in Benue State today regarding the terrorizing presence of Fulani herdsmen there. We cannot afford another Plateau State-like scenario of endemic ethno-religious conflict. That is why all those dangerous criminals said to be Fulani breeders and their accomplices must be fished out, punished and eventually removed from Benue.
The most powerful way of empowering our society and making it less vulnerable is to insist on having a truly democratic representation at all levels. We deplore a situation where a visionless, irresponsible and inefficient kind of politicking by our so-called elites in especially Tiv land has left the people mere hewers of wood and drawers of water even as the state’s key assets are either left decrepit, mismanaged, plundered, abandoned or in the hands of extra-state monopolies. Only visionary governance aimed at economically empowering the majority through sound fiscal and social policies can ensure our collective salvation.
We hasten to make a sober declaration here that the Tivs and the people of Benue in general do not want a conflict with the Fulanis or any other persons or groups for that matter, but, at the same time, we want to make it crystal clear that we will not fold our arms and allow a situation whereby the lives, lands and other vital interests of our people are being brazenly destroyed or endangered. While rejecting the trap of ethno-religious stereotyping that hurts law-abiding citizens, it must be stated unequivocally that impunity is not an option here. That means that we must also tell ourselves home truths. It’s the only way to help find pro-active and lasting solutions to this festering problem of criminal intrusions, massacres, reprisals and widespread destruction in Benue State.
Hopefully, other national communities grappling with similar situations will benefit from the way Benue handles the current scourge it is facing.
No doubt taking advantage of the inept and corrupt PDP regime of Gabriel Suswam that is lacking in electoral, democratic legitimacy and is distracted or burdened precisely on account of that illegitimacy, the Fulani herdsmen and their backers are increasingly becoming smug in their agenda of internal imperialism. Confronted with this redoubtable adversity, the globe-trotting Suswam and the rubber stamp state legislature have been expected to initiate stringent legislation at both the state and local government levels aimed at effectively dealing with the terrorist threat constituted by the homicidal herdsmen and their sponsors. We frown at the despicable and infantile gesture by the Benue State House of Assembly which, when goaded to react to the incessant killings and ransacking of whole communities by the herdsmen and their fellow bandits, did farcically suggest that the buying and consumption of beef be banned in the state as a sanction against the culprits.
But the latter-day colonialist probing by the Fulanis is also finding a relatively easy prey in this part of Nigeria due, in large part, to the selfishness, greed, myopia and apparent lack of a strong sense of community on the part of locals and their putative leadership. This last point is most certainly not lost on the aggressively activist Miyetti Allah Association whose strident, shrill and unabashedly triumphalist pro-Fulani breeders rhetoric is met by a frustrating paucity of Benue or indigenous voices (Tiv and Idoma) who should be out there systematically deconstructing what is akin to genocidal warfare on the minorities of Benue State and much of northern Nigeria.
More than any other identifiable group, the Tivs of Benue State have been at the receiving end of the atrocities unleashed by Fulani herdsmen and their allies. In the last few months alone, conservative estimates by the local Nigerian media have put the number of dead in Tiv zones at over 900 and in the predominantly Idoma-speaking area of Agatu at over 200. The killing fields of Guma local government area(LGA), Gwer-West LGA, Gwer-East LGA, Makurdi, Katsina-Ala, Ukum, Kwande and Agatu LGAs(just to mention these troubled spots) have weekly been witness to disheartening scenes of gruesome and indiscriminate murders of mostly unarmed, helpless men, women and children. The demented depravation and ruin are accompanied by desolating and painful images of internally displaced persons, a great number of them mutilated, dazed or made indigent and huddled together in precarious refuge as they await answers to their terrible plight. The unspeakable hecatombs being inflicted on the long-suffering populations in Benue are a powerful testimony to the worrisome reality that the state is under siege and that complacency will only make matters much worse. We should reject both the silence and inaction of those who should know better.
We single out the Tor Tiv, His Royal Highness, Alfred Torkula, for his troubling silence in the face of the untold killings being perpetrated against his people. A relative of Gabriel Suswam, Mr. Torkula who has of late gone out of his way to show open political partisanship by siding with Suswam and his PDP against political opponents, has quite surprisingly kept quiet even as his subjects in his native village and elsewhere in Tiv land fall victim to massacres and burnings by Fulani herdsmen. We take this opportunity to also solemnly call on His Royal Highness and Suswam to once and for all publicly address the persistent reports making the rounds in Benue State regarding their alleged unwholesome but pivotal role in the massacres and forced settlements by Fulani herdsmen there. For instance, it is said that both Suswam and the Tor Tiv did use their positions to illegally and contentiously “lease out” ancestral Tiv lands to some powerful individuals of Fulani or far-north origin to be utilized as grazing grounds. One would like to know who those beneficiaries of the ‘leased’ lands are and how much money was made from such questionable transactions. Critically also, does government keep track of lands “leased out” by other individuals or groups?
As is common knowledge, ownership of cattle herds is not the exclusive preserve of nomads. Many influential individuals (traditional rulers, retired military officers, established politicians, religious potentates, etc.) do own large herds of cattle and employ “farm hands” often referred to simply as herdsmen to take care of them. The religious coloration of the pogroms by the Fulani herdsmen aside, the important element of ultimate ownership of the cattle that have been involved in savage killings by the herders in Benue and elsewhere in the country is critical in helping explain the intractable nature of the violent and seemingly well coordinated attacks Benue State and other communities have been experiencing for some time now. That ownership may also help explain the ‘sophisticated’ stridency (and even virulence) of the quasi-religious and political tone of the advocacy by an outfit like the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association. The current Tor Tiv, Alfred Torkula, can afford to invoke damnation (“swem”, in Tiv) against a political opponent of his relative, Suswam, but, like the latter, is irresponsibly playing hide-and-seek while Benue and Tiv land burn. Where is the wisdom?
Crucially, reliable sources have it that Governor Suswam and his mediocre PDP regime have reached a secret deal with some nebulous but powerful interests and that the secret deal may be one of the key factors that have encouraged Jonathan and his regime to set-up a committee intended to effectively reaffirm the untenable establishment of so-called grazing grounds for Fulani cattle breeders in Benue and elsewhere. Both the Tor Tiv and Gov. Suswam should come out and transparently tell the people of Benue State and the Tivs in particular that they will not be part of the dangerous grazing grounds agenda (and its sub-text of irresponsible land confiscation) that is reportedly the basis of the recent committee set up by the Jonathan administration and which has received such effusive praise from the Miyetti Allah Association.
Jonathan and his truant PDP-led government must be told that they dig their political graves in the Middle-Belt and most other locations of the country when they seek to impose abhorrent, misguided and ultimately unpopular measures that pander to the parochial interests of some powerful individuals or lobbies but are bound to exacerbate ethno-religious conflict and insecurity nationwide. The grazing reserves quest is a non-starter. It is a retrogressive move that can only engender more criminality and instability. The abdicating Jonathan regime should deal with its numerous failures arising from the incompetence and corruption of its key operators and stop resorting to diversionary tactics that further overheat the polity. Above all, Jonathan and his PDP administration must be reminded that the president swore to defend the security of Nigerian citizens, a constitutional responsibility he is so far not fulfilling, especially in the besieged Benue State and much of the Middle-Belt .
(To be continued)
Aonduna Tondu ([email protected]).
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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