Still on your second submission that farmer-herder incidents on farmlands is a dummy, Governor Ortom. I’m confident your fellow governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, would laugh. Mr Patrick Yakowa, a former governor of Kaduna State, too would be alarmed if he were still here. Mr Ramalan Yero who succeeded Yakowa would equally be bewildered by your latest narrative.
After a series of reprisals in southern parts of Kaduna State, reports were that Yakowa especially reached out to Fulani people even beyond the Nigerian borders. Monetary payments were made to placate them over whatever grouses there were between them and the locals in the southern sections of the state. Residents too, particularly aggrieved farm owners, were equally treated. El-Rufai’s government knows best the local situation to declare that many of the latest attacks in the state were reprisals for earlier attacks that had their origins in crop-herd incidents on farmlands before he came to office.
Would you, Governor Ortom, claim there was never a time incidents happened between a lone herder and a farm owner in Benue State, even if the matter had since escalated beyond that level of engagement?
News reports during that phase attest to these things and as a journalist, I should remember them well. Also, incidents on farmlands were a reason you introduced the anti-grazing law. Thereafter, you quoted some herders as vowing to attack until the law was rescinded. Now you’ve changed the narrative, claiming the incident on farmlands is a dummy, thus inferring that this is never at the root of the current situation in Benue State. You mean there were no incidents on farmlands but you simply introduced anti-grazing law? Governor Ortom, when we cry we still see.
Lately, I mentioned Gombe State where residents said herders came in from Niger Republic, fed cattle with crops on farmlands and sometimes killed farmers. In late 2021, the Governor of Gombe State, Inuwa Yahaya, ordered that farmers should collect their harvests between November and January. During that period, he announced that herders wouldn’t be permitted to pass through farmlands so that there wouldn’t be clashes.
In LGAs in northern parts of Kaduna State such as Makarfi, locals sometimes talk about how a lone herder may make herd eat their farm crops. I listened in Makarfi as farmers narrated their challenges with regard to the attitude of some of the younger stubborn herders. This is happening. But Governor Ortom, you say it’s a dummy.
In the South-West, news reports were many about herders who made their animals eat farm crops. Sometimes, such herders don’t engage in armed attacks. Locals simply say herds ate their crops. Nonetheless, this spurs residents’ disaffection for herders. Herds destroying crops have become a major cause of social disharmony, attacks and reprisal attacks. But you, Governor Ortom, are saying such is a dummy. In different places in Nigeria’s South, some violent attacks have been attributed to the other tribe first but later it was found that members of local tribes were behind them. These things happen yet people like you, Governor Ortom, won’t stop this fixation with generalising the crimes committed by a few to all the members of a tribe. This is what your claim that the farmer-herder issue is a “dummy” promotes. Some of us know though that your latest submission is another shift in narrative because you’ve found that your previous positions are faulted.
The same ‘shift’ pattern is in the narrative promoted by those who go around drumming up hatred against the other tribe that the religion they claim has actually instructed them to win over. It’s a contradiction that people who claim to have a religion emit hatred as they do about an entire tribe because of the criminality of a few. If any reader misses that point they’ve missed the core of my contrary argument each time these people make the claims they do, shifting their narratives each time. Governor Ortom, I find it shocking that you, a man of reason, bought these people’s narrative that’s propelled by hatred for every Fulani rather than reason with regard to insecurity in your own state. Governor, do you hate Fulani too?
You generalise your latest argument beyond your state to cover the whole of Nigeria. Your submission lacks such credibility and I shall proceed to state my reasons by returning to the first claim you made, that criminal elements collaborate. Governor, criminals collaborate to perpetrate their evil intentions just as security agencies collaborate to stop them. Telling us this as though it’s some new fact shows you concentrate on the problem rather than the solution. In saner climes, citizens and governments cooperate to ensure criminals don’t achieve their aim. But in Nigeria elements whose activism is to demonise the other tribe deflect attention from finding solutions. They just want to demonise at every opportunity and they co-opt public figures like you who have ready-made grouses.
Also, your comment about collaboration among criminals presents the picture of only one tribe as the cause of the security challenges in Nigeria. You would then have been understood by those who didn’t know, particularly in the South, to mean that all the groups you claimed collaborated with herders belonged to one tribe. Governor Ortom, are all members of Boko Haram Fulani people? Are all members of ISWAP Fulani people? I discussed the damage this demonisation narrative does to peoples and country in “The Nobel laureate and the Fulani cattle breeders” -September 2nd & 9th, 2022, online. (Readers may wish to note that my column is unfailingly on The PUNCH website every Friday even if it doesn’t appear in print).
Governor Ortom, we mustn’t forget that the criminal elements you said collaborated didn’t start at the same time and they stated their different objectives. If, as you claim, a few criminal herders now collaborate with Boko Haram, ISWAP etc. it can only mean one thing—governments should raise their game in order to overpower them. It’s what governments do, what leaders do rather than announce that criminals collaborate. Act of criminality isn’t static; perpetrators seek new ways to achieve their goals. In Nigeria, rather than seek new ways to be steps ahead of criminals, most political leaders are fixated about which tribe commits what crime. This is particularly the case with regard to herders-related issues.
This approach of lamenting about a problem that many public figures in this country engage in is wearisome. If discussing problem so that solutions could be found is the objective, it’s fine. But many just accuse and accuse, venting hatred for the other tribe when it’s not the whole of the other tribe that offends them. Governor Ortom, don’t go that way. Your role shouldn’t be to make public statements that demonise a tribe as your latest outing apparently connoted. You’re the leader of all tribes and you need to keep in view that all members of any tribe don’t engage in criminal activities. Don’t allow those who come from tribes where they traditionally hate the other tribe rope you into their pockets. You’re a man of reason; don’t allow the unfortunate attacks on your people, carried out by a few criminal elements, make you lose your reason.
Instead, I urge you to work on encouraging harmony among peaceful members of all tribes; they should be part of your effort towards finding solution to the current crisis in your state. It’s good you set up a security outfit recently. But it can’t be the only approach.
Deploy modern technology in such a manner that your state security outfit has eyes in the sky 24 hours to see who’s moving where, when, and with what. Co-opt every local means to either curb attacks or get perpetrators arrested.
This is what you should be doing, rather than promoting narratives that basically rewrite history. What benefit does that kind of narrative have for your people who wait desperately for solutions?
Creating a narrative that incidents on farmlands that happened didn’t happen isn’t a smart move. Inferring that farmer-herder issues never preceded the ongoing killings in Benue State is, to state the least, very strange. Generalising the same narrative for the whole of Nigeria is even worse. Your thesis on that front is too fundamentally faulty for it to fly. Drop that line of argument, Governor Ortom.
