What goes around they say comes around. The chicken has eventually come home to roost. Nigeria has been driven into darkness by unscrupulous politicians – killings day and night, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism, insurgency, attacks, hyper-inflation, poverty, hunger, starvation and wanton misery. And everybody including the politicians themselves is endangered. If you ask what the problem is? The preponderant response would be Fulani herdsmen and Buhari. And if you further ask what could be done? Most of the governors, the supposedly chief executives and security officers of the various states would throw their hands in the air, to say nothing! Their argument is simple – the herdsmen are the problem and Buhari is the only one responsible because he is president and a Fulani man.
“An Igbo proverb tells us that a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.” The social, economic and political insecurity rain beating Nigeria today began since the foundation of our nation. And are attributable to insincere and irresponsible leaders at national, state and local government levels. Over time, the scale and dimension have continued to vary from one part to another. Benue and Kwara are two north-central states that can serve as interesting case studies.
Apparently, Benue has become a killing field; day and night, occasioned by vicious attacks on individuals, local communities, helpless populations and security personnel. In fact, data enumerators are at a loss on figures. By contrast, Kwara State, to some extent exhibits some level of sanity. To be sure, the state has been reported to be one of those with the lowest percentage of killings in the country in recent times. The two states also provide two other critical opposing indicators; apart from the proactivity of the Kwara State governor, Kwara does not share the Benue social entropy.
Unlike Kwara, a very strong feature of the Benue socio-political landscape is the age-long existence of militia groups. Somehow, these militia groups have become entrenched and institutionalized within the state’s political system. Over the years, politicians in the state have secretly advanced and equipped them with sophisticated weapons to the extent that they can face-up to the national security personnel.
To be sure, on October 12, 2001, a militia group abducted and wasted 19 innocent soldiers whose mutilated bodies were found in the village of Zaki-Biam. The soldiers were deployed to the area to restore law and order. More recently, on April 9, another set of 11 soldiers on routine operational task were similarly wasted in the state. These figures do not include scores of police officers massacred in the state. To better gain an understanding outside the killing of security personnel in the state, one may further add a few examples such as the gruesome murder of Senator Gabriel Suswam’s brother, and the killing and abduction of some locales and chiefs in Ado Local Government Area of the state. Yet, the consistent music oozing out of the megaphone on the state governor’s mouth is Fulani-herdsmen. Clearly, the farmers and herders conflict is part of the problem. But, the magnitude of the insecurity in the state goes, way, way beyond the Fulani-herdsmen.
In Kwara, rather than lay the blame at the door steps of the presidency and an ethnic group, Governor AbdulRasaq has been proactively strategic and open. As the chief security officer of the state, he has made it very clear that security is everybody’s business in the state which does not necessarily require the use of bullets and brute force but the reduction in social entropy. Accordingly, he has been very vigilant and sensitive to any form of security breach in any part of the state. He has continuously told community leaders that the state will not tolerate any breach of security in their domain by indirectly diffusing the community-based security model.
To be sure, the most recent and prominent case was the application of the model after the kidnap of a prominent farmer at Oke-Onigbin, a village in Isin Local Government of the state. Because of one, just one kidnap incident, the local government chairman declared a state of emergency. He went ahead to set up a seven-man security committee. The committee comprised the representatives of government, religious and traditional leaders, the vigilante group and local hunters.
The committee among others was charged with the responsibility of gathering useful intelligence information, mobilize community members against all forms of criminal activities and engage the vigilante group to take action by keeping watch and searching all likely areas of hideouts. Above all, the committee was also charged with the responsibility of mobilizing huge resources to diffuse anti-criminal information in the community. Because of a single case of kidnap, the governor kept the local government’s political, traditional and religious leaders on their toes and the response has been wonderful.
The Benue State governor in marked sharp contrast has found solace in presidency and Fulani name-calling hysteria. One cannot imagine any previous cohort of Benue people that has been captivated by name-calling sentiment as much as the present one. They are continually bombarded with messages of hate, divisiveness and derision while the general atmosphere in the state is innocuously saturated with the generalization of the criminal activities of individuals and group of individuals. For sure, there are many Fulani-herdsmen in Benue State who are not involved in killings, banditry, kidnapping, terrorism and attacks. At the same time no responsible president of a country would fold his arms and watch his citizens massacred.
Paradoxically, while the Benue State governor is busy speculatively announcing the culpability of Fulani herdsmen and the presidency, day-in-day-out, he deliberately refuses to attempt to develop an effective, sustainable, broad, comprehensive, systematic, coordinated and evidence-based strategies that would be helpful in day-to-day curbing of the overall insecurity in in the state, especially rural communities. Equally disturbing is the manner in which the governor is using the anti-Fulani herdsmen and presidency sentiment as a political tool.
In a real sense, security takes the form and coloration of its context. The magnitude of the security challenges facing Benue State and similar situations in other parts of the country, can only be checkmated if communities decided with all sincerity and one voice that they would no longer tolerate criminals and criminal acts. Security is essentially about people and communities. Benue government, communities and people require sincere actions. Beyond the anti-grazing law, Governor Samuel Ortom needs to urgently articulate and implement a sincere all inclusive community-based strategy.
Dr Okidu writes from Ilorin, Kwara State.
