Nigeria As Thoroughfare For Killer Herdsmen, By Majeed Dahiru

Through implicit ethnic solidarity, President Buhari has neglected his most fundamental responsibility as commander-in-chief, which is to secure the lives and property of Nigerians… This failure of leadership is rapidly transforming the Nigerian territory into a thoroughfare for marauding killer herdsmen who are pouring in unhindered from West and Central Africa and wreaking havoc on helpless citizens.

There are about 20 armed groups operating in Nigeria, necessitating a string of military operations and exercises in about 30 out 36 states of the federation. From “Operation Lafia Dole” that is battling Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East to “Operation Awatse”, which was launched to tackle militant activities sabotaging oil pipelines and other infrastructure in the South West and “Operation Crocodile Smile” that has engaged the Niger Delta Avengers, whose militant activities destroyed much of Nigeria’s oil and gas infrastructure in the oil rich region, Nigeria’s internal security architecture has become overtly militarised. This is a clear but worrisome indicator that Nigeria is in a state of undeclared war; not with an enemy nation but with itself.

Despite this near total militarisation of internal security in order to contain the menace of armed groups, the security situation in Nigeria has continued to deteriorate. The deadly Boko Haram terror group, whose violent activities is estimated to have claimed over 20,000 Nigerians lives in the past eight years has yielded its leading position as the major challenge to Nigeria’s security to marauding killer herdsmen. Whereas, the Boko Haram insurgency is mostly confined to the North-Eastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, the violent activities of killer herdsmen stretch across the entire length and breadth of Nigeria, leaving a higher number of casualties. In 2017 alone, an estimated 598 Nigerians perished in the hands of killer herdsmen. The trend is on the rise as over 1000 people have been slaughtered across different locations in the first four months of 2018 in a daily killing orgy. The killing of over 80 men, women and children in Benue State in January comes close to the daily casualty rate of 160 deaths per day in the on-going Syrian civil war, which according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) has claimed a total of 360,000 lives in seven years.

The intractability of the menace of the killer herdsmen, much like the Boko Haram insurgency is as a result of deliberate distortion, obscuring and denial of its nature, alongside the motives and identities of the perpetrators. If Boko Haram is a conflict between faith and citizenship, with the former becoming triumphant as it arises from a radical Islamic ideology that denounces Nigeria’s multi-religious, secular constitutional democracy as inconsistent with its brand of Islam and thereby seeks its total destruction to make way for an Islamic state with ties to a unified global Muslim community (Ummah) under a single administration by Sharia (Caliphate), then the killer herdsmen menace is similarly a conflict between culture and law and order. This arises from a rigid insistence on a nomadic lifestyle that can longer be sustained in the face of the modern day economic reality of land redistribution to accommodate other diverse economic interests. There must be a clear definition of causes and effects through a thorough diagnosis of a security situation, before the deployment of military hardware to contain this, otherwise the military effort will be greatly counter-productive as a result of the lack of clarity of the security situation.

…prominent figures in the political leadership seem individually afflicted by the psychological conflict between faith and citizenship, or it appears that the imperatives of their cultures clash with the rule of law and order, particularly in the multi-religious/cultural secular constitutional democracy that Nigeria is.

Like the Muslim community in Nigeria denied that Boko Haram insurgents are not Muslims, there appears to be a concerted effort to obscure the cultural identity of the killer herdsmen by various interest groups. Conspiracy theories abound and they have confused and confounded many about the nature and motives of these killings. These conspiracy theories have been given impetus by a government that clearly lacks the political will to call a spade by its true name and fails to contain these numerous instances of internal conflict, and acts of the ultimate self-immolation. This appears so because, in recent times, prominent figures in the political leadership seem individually afflicted by the psychological conflict between faith and citizenship, or it appears that the imperatives of their cultures clash with the rule of law and order, particularly in the multi-religious/cultural secular constitutional democracy that Nigeria is. These issues are discernable in the personality of President Muhammadu Buhari, as reflected in his internal security and defence policies.

From blaming Islamic jihadists that are infiltrating the country from all over the Sahel to an invasion by Muamar Gadhafi’s “trained and armed fighters” and now the “opposition parties”, Buhari’s administration has made futile attempts at covering smoke with a basket. President Buhari’s inherent conflict between his citizenship and his cultural identity, in which the latter appears to be triumphant, has hampered his ability to uphold law and order firmly as the commander-in-chief, thereby greatly undermining national security. While he launched a decisive military operation against cattle rustling in the North-West, he has failed to do same in central Nigeria. His infamous remark on “the need to accommodate one another” is a subtle emotional blackmail of farming communities to yield their land to cattle breeders for unrestrained grazing, in spite of the forceful intimidation of killer herdsmen.

Another clue about the identities and motives of killer herdsmen is discernable from the sustained opposition to the anti-open grazing laws in Benue and Taraba States by the umbrella body of Fulani cattle breeders in Nigeria, Miyetti Allah. The group initially issued threats of violence against the enactments of these laws and later proffered justifications of the mass killings of members of farming communities as being due to the implementation of the laws, which is a clear indicator of the underlining conflict between culture and law and order. The Fulani traditional and political leadership establishment, among who are top ranking patrons of the Miyetti Allah, is near unanimous in its alignment with the foregoing standpoint. The Fulani leadership went the extra mile of claiming responsiblity for these killings when it justified the carnage in Benue as reprisal for earlier mass killings of the Fulani in Taraba by men of the Mambila ethnic militia. Therefore, it is safe to draw a conclusion that killer herdsmen mostly recruited from Central and Western Africa are carrying out attacks in the country, including vengeful reprisals on farmer communities on behalf of Nigeria’s indigenous Fulani cattle breeders, with whom they share ethnic and cultural affiliation.

By viewing the murderous activities of killer herdsmen through the narrow prism of farmer/herder clashes, the Buhari administration has failed to realise that the major victims of killer herdsmen are mostly not members of clashing farming communities but innocent and unarmed citizens who are soft targets because of their shared ethnic affiliations and close geographical proximity to hostile farming communities.

No thanks to government inertia, which the marauders have taking as tacit approval of their murderous enterprise, the violent activities of killer herdsmen have progressed from being ethnic self-defence of cattle breeders against aggressive farming communities (the farmers/herders clashes) to emboldened onslaughts on these farming communities in the lush vegetative belt of central and southern Nigeria to make way for unrestrained cattle grazing of cultivated farmlands (pure terrorism). By viewing the murderous activities of killer herdsmen through the narrow prism of farmer/herder clashes, the Buhari administration has failed to realise that the major victims of killer herdsmen are mostly not members of clashing farming communities but innocent and unarmed citizens who are soft targets because of their shared ethnic affiliations and close geographical proximity to hostile farming communities. The recent invasion of a catholic church in Benue by killer herdsmen during morning mass, which left 19 people dead, including the parish priest and his assistant (May Allah admit their souls into paradise), is a practical example of their raging terrorism against defenceless citizens.

Through implicit ethnic solidarity, President Buhari has neglected his most fundamental responsibility as commander-in-chief, which is to secure the lives and property of Nigerians and, in this instance, to prevent the loss of any life from disputes between farmers and herders over the economics of land utilisation. This failure of leadership is rapidly transforming the Nigerian territory into a thoroughfare for marauding killer herdsmen who are pouring in unhindered from West and Central Africa and wreaking havoc on helpless citizens.

Majeed Dahiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja and can be reached through dahirumajeed@gmail.com.

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