Onuwa Lucky Joseph
As a kid, back in the 1970s, a recurring fantasy of mine was how I could one day join the contingent of some Fulani herdsman and his flock as they trekked North-South and then South-North, no compass but never getting lost as they wandered the bushes, forests and savannas. How did they even cross the rivers?! It was the dream adventure I wanted to experience, no matter how briefly.
It never happened of course. But the Fulani herdsman’s life, to my then little mind, was the epitome of cowboy glamour, not to mention gallantry. The multicoloured garments on the men’s skinny frames, the sometimes elaborate hairdo and make up the men had on, their skillful prodding and leading of animals much bigger than they themselves, animals not always predictable by the way, these made me a fan. It didn’t hurt my sweet tooth that they usually would barter their ‘wara’ (cheese) for their other practical needs as they prepared to move on to other locations.
Today, the herdsmen do not evoke any such fervid fanboy feelings. With millions of Nigerians having been at the receiving end of their devilry, it’s difficult to see many who have good things to say about them.
It started when they test ran what would eventually become their habitual overrun of people’s farms and homesteads. They expected push back one way or another. But seeing as that didn’t come from the victims or the government to which the victims had outsourced their safety and security, the herdsmen, over time, graduated to full blown banditry inclusive of kidnapping, land grabbing and killing of victims, and this, all over the country.
The news of Fulani herdsmen mayhem has become somewhat monotonous especially on social media where real time documentation is done that captures the atrocities as they are committed. The mainstream media tend to hold back on such reports, understandably, maybe, considering the fear factor the feudal system dangles on their businesses like the sword of Damocles.
This write up is in no way an alarmist squeal except of course in the ears of the see-no-evil defenders of government’s pussyfooting and the oligarchy machinations working behind the scenes to frustrate the aspirations of the Nigerian citizenry. The insidious need of these deluded ‘defenders’ for propulsion to Olympian heights in a country where citizens lay flattened by relentless poverty and abandonment is not altogether a mystery. They would rather, again understandably, the sweet carrot than the hard stick with which the majority makes do.
But away from the nuisance of the hirelings, it is indefensible, incomprehensible in fact, that a particular strand of an ethnic group is spilling blood all over Nigeria and people are frozen in fright. Everywhere. And rather than deal it the sledgehammer it deserves, Aso Rock looks to be deeply immersed in the cocktail of clandestine effort by shadowy individuals and organizations invested in ensuring that a coordinated resistance to this bloodshed is muffled.
In what had seemed at the time like a last-ditch effort to stop the herdsmen advance down south, the Southwest states, bloodied by the incessant harassment of their citizens by herdsmen, set up Amotekun, under the leadership of the late governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu.
As was expected, governors from the North, APC governors especially, resisted it, encouraging the Federal Government under Muhammadu Buhari to declare the organization illegal. And as was hardly surprising, the then Attorney General, Abubakar Malami, did declare Amotekun illegal. No need verifying, but their version of the 1989 Constitution, as amended, one must add, declares illegal, any effort by yourself to protect yourself in your own country!
With further horse trading and not to forget Sunday Igboho’s strategically deployed ‘nuisance value’, some kind of compromise was reached but even then, it is clear that the Amotekun that operates today does so with far less latitude than its founders ideated at its conception. It’s been calculatedly declawed to discourage other regions from giving theirs (whenever they set up their own versions), too much firepower, literally. The more docile the watchdog the better, that being the thinking from the chilly summit of Aso Rock.
Amotekun left governors of the restive South East no excuse but to come up with Ebubeagu. Launched in Owerri in April 2021 and headquartered in Enugu, its success, with regard to meeting its remit, is blowing this way and that way, in the heady winds…
But a month before the formation of Ebubeagu, in May 2021, to be exact, all the governors from the southern part of Nigeria met to communally decry the deteriorating security situation and to make suggestions for improved security nationwide. A huge plank of their suggestion was for the ban on open grazing which had been identified as a strong exacerbator of insecurity in each of the states of southern, not to mention all of, Nigeria. The event was a colourful and emotive media event. All gestures and deft playmanship from veteran exhibitors adept at playing to Nigeria’s public gallery.
The one solid character who, not being a southerner, could not be part of the security summit referenced above, but who stood firm and went blow for blow against the presidency, was the immediate past governor of Benue governor, Samuel Ortom. Whatever else may be his weaknesses, history will remember his courageous one-man resistance against the herdsmen-inclined government of Muhammadu Buhari, leading to his promulgating, in 2017, the ban on open grazing in Benue State.
A serious government at the centre would have seen this for the courageous act that it was: an effort at preserving the productive capacity of a state widely acclaimed as the nation’s food basket and with proven capacity for massive production of crops like oranges, yams, mangoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, soya bean, guinea corn, flax, sesame, rice, groundnuts and palm fruits, amongst others.
The Benue State ban on open grazing was, however, a call to arms that the herdsmen could not resist, and they did everything possible, aided by Buhari’s intransigent government at the centre, to strangle it. The bloodletting went up many notches and going by the body language in Abuja it was clear there was tacit support for the herdsmen to do as much damage as possible until the wayward state government found its way back to its senses.
But Benue was not the only state under fire. General Theophilus Yakubu (TY) Danjuma had had enough of the herdsmen menace in his Taraba State, a state contiguous to Benue. Seeing the infamous body language from Aso Rock and interpreting it (correctly, we dare say) as giving herdsmen the nod to run rampage without any form of government restraint, the onetime (and still wildly influential) Chief of Army Staff advised Nigerians everywhere to bear arms to defend their lands in order to forestall “ethnic cleansing”, (his words) this being the peculiar tendency of the herdsmen to take over ancestral lands after attacking and driving away what little remained of the native dwellers.
That no-holds-barred straight talk coming from a northern minority strongman who happened to have been an ex-boss of President Buhari, carried far and graphically expressed what the rest of the increasingly restive citizens in the Middle Belt and Southern parts of the country were beginning to arrive at as the next practical resort.
Instructively, at a media function not so long ago, the current Chief of Defense Staff, General Christopher Musa, opened up on the hidden-in-plain-sight raison d’etre for the increasingly frequent violent bust-ups in the North West. The agelong friction between the Hausa and Fulani, he said, (and I paraphrase him), had never really been a secret. It’d been on for long. While the rest of the country lumped both ethnicities into one as Hausa-Fulani, there had always been a simmering discontent amongst the Hausas who for more than 2 centuries had seen their kingdoms and empires overturned as they became vassals of the Fulani; a seething resentment now being compounded by the recurrent destruction of their farms and livelihoods by herdsmen of Fulani extraction.
The Fulani, on the other hand, are uncomfortable with the fact that Hausas enjoy taking casual potshots at them and their cattle whenever they venture to the farms or towns.
Clearly the question as to why all of Nigeria is Fulani herdsmen-fatigued is a no brainer. The herdsmen’s mercenary mindset is a big factor. They think of scorched earth almost exclusively. They are anarchically destructive. They want nothing in their path as they make their way to whatever it is that they want. Too bad if what they want is yours. They simply dispossess you of it. And should you prove too much of an obstacle, they take you out as well. That has been the experience of many Nigerians the length and breadth of the country.
It seems not in them to cohabit unless they are dominating such that the owners of the land begin to recognise them as the real landlords. Every resource is deemed theirs. And seeing as they have their people in or around power in Nigeria, they can come from anywhere, and this literally, to become bona fide natives of any place in Nigeria. Bala Mohammed (who plans on becoming President of Nigeria someday), and not to forget Ahmad Gumi, alias Bandits’ Spokesperson, amongst many others, have been voluble in their push for Nigerians’ acceptance of these arms wielding foreigners as individuals who can settle anywhere in Nigeria and become co-natives of those lands.
How is this tenable? Which leads many harking back to General Danjuma’s admonition about bearing arms, something he restated at another recent public event in Taraba. That Baba must know what he’s talking about…
If the Federal Government insists on not checking the excesses of herdsmen, it’s only a matter of time before the situation becomes compounded with people who, deeming themselves in harm’s way, relieve the government of its safety and security obligations to them and assume it themselves. If the current nationwide chaos morphs into that morbid possibility, it would bode no one any good. Cattle, not being microscopic by any means, do not require a sniper’s shot-making abilities to get hit en masse. In the same way as the herdsmen have demonstrated time and again their ability to hit and bring ruination to communities, it would be an endless cycle of do-me-I-do-you, unless the government demonstrates the political and moral will to do the needful.
Nor do I write this as someone far removed from the theatre of operations. I bought a few hectares of land in Nasarawa in 2012 and developed it into a farm in 2016 with a mind to using it as some sort of personal resort where I can recess now and then to do some creative writing and mental rejuvenation. That has never happened. The unending threat of herdsmen intrusion makes one wary of staying overnight at the farm.
One Sunday, a few months ago, my farm manager called me to say all the plants we had at the farm – pepper, tomato, okro, watermelon, banana, plantain, palm trees, mangoes, had, at midnight, been brought down by herdsmen. It being fasting season, herdsmen do limited movement in the heat of the day, preferring to take their cattle foraging at night.
We had put in so much money, manhours and effort getting the seeds and seedlings, preparing the land, irrigating all through the unbearably harsh weather, hoping and praying that the rains would fall soon so we’d be able to get the plants doing better and ready for the market in quick time. But in one night, the herdsmen descended (2-3a.m.) and destroyed everything. This was neither the first nor second time. It just happens and we’re supposed to bear it because some state sanctioned vandals happened to be in the neighbourhood and went about their job in the evilest way possible.
It hurts even worse that there’s no way to seek proper redress. Going to the police tends to be a waste of time, as had been our experience previous other times. But we did, to file the complaint, and police personnel, overwhelmed, in truth, by many cases similar to ours that they were handling, showed up 48 hours later just to sight see. They said they couldn’t do much inasmuch as we had not apprehended at least one of the herdsmen! Weaponless people should have caught weapon-wielding criminals and taken them to the police! Only then would we have had a case. See?
Anyhow, the herdsmen came back the next day, and this time, to be fair to the Nigerian Police, a few of their key operatives went into action after we reached them, and they were able to apprehend one of the vandals, eventually putting him behind the counter. The vandal took it in his stride, like all in a day’s job. No fear, no remorse. Despite our humongous losses, we ended up not getting a kobo of compensation. Only an undertaking that they would not return to do further damage. Of course, they’ve been back since then. A number of times. ‘They’re in charge’ that is how they think. No, know!
What is clear is that Nigeria, run as it is by many string-pulling fat cows in the shadows, cares nothing for food security or any other guarantees that citizens ought to have in order to live reasonably livable lives.
If the government means well, for instance, precursory to the national census, there should be a census of herdsmen in the many different places where they find themselves in the country. There should be some biometric identification that is transmissible to other parts of the country so that officers of the law have a background on the characters roaming the length and breadth of this country. They need know that Nigeria is not Wild Wild West country. We’re only doing them a favour by allowing them passage to forage, never mind what herdsmen apologists like Bala Mohammed and Nasir El Rufai have to say on the matter.
Herdsmen are not a law unto themselves. That much must be passed across. They cannot kill, and despite being the provocateurs, still be shielded from suffering the dastardly fate they inflict on others. The state cannot go on turning a blind eye to their rules-be-damned lifestyle.
Take Nyesom Wike’s case for example. On assumption of office as minister of the FCT, one of his loudest proclamations was that he would restrict herdsmen’s access to the city. For where?! They are still everywhere in Abuja, moving at their own leisurely pace and daring anyone headstrong enough to confront them. Wike is incapable of reining them in. Instead, he has focused his energy on the triple fronts of property (and home) demolitions in Abuja, road constructions, and making life uncomfortable for Fubara in Rivers State. If Wike, despite his considerable war chest and law enforcement complement can do nothing about herdsmen in the FCT, who then is the defenseless farmer or villager that can resist their onslaught on his/her farm or community?!
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Until and unless there is a gazetted law addressing this mindless mayhem, things will only get worse, and this even as government continues its meaningless reassurance on food security. The nationwide marauding east, west, north and south ought to be the real emergency situation that requires government’s undivided attention. It does seem, going by governments’ piddling effort, however, that it expects a situation where everywhere is on fire simultaneously in order to enable a nebulous declaration of emergency rule nationwide. Is that what this is about?
If that is not the case, the laws in the various states against open grazing should be given muscle in such a way that Abuja does not hinder their enforcement by surreptitiously and sometimes blatantly asking the police and armed forces to stand by while the herdsmen roam and kill freely.
The case of Sunday Jackson is instructive of state backing for the unending banditry. Jackson, seven years ago, killed a herdsman, Ardo Bawuro, who invaded his (Jackson’s) farm and attacked him with a weapon and with the intent to kill him. Jackson suffered cuts from the attack but managed to seize the knife and in the ensuing struggle killed the trespasser. Without regards to the circumstances under which the herdsman died, an Adamawa High Court sentenced Farmer Jackson to death in 2021. That entirely bizarre sentence was recently upheld by the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 2025.
We do not need more than that judgment to tell the story of our self-created moral dilemma on this matter. Armed herdsmen can kill you and go free but you are only assigned the responsibility to live and let live. Wasn’t that what Femi Adeshina told us: Yield your lands to them and live. Why die defending your land????? Buhari’s Aso Rock sent us that memo!
This is an issue President Bola Tinubu cannot but put atop his priority list. The massive insecurity legacy left behind by Muhammadu Buhari cannot be allowed to amass any more ungainly weight.
My experience and observation tell me that it would be near impossible to insist on ranching exclusively. It’s an expensive endeavour that requires massive initial and ongoing capital outlay. I’m of the view therefore that open grazing can go on as long as the herdsmen are acquainted with the idea of boundaries and the appropriate sanctions they would bear if they violate the terms as laid out by the law.
It is also up to the government to ensure that those displaced are returned to their ancestral lands. Without fail. Those who have lost property are compensated. Herdsmen who kill are sentenced to appropriate terms of imprisonment. And those who kill herdsmen unprovoked also get their appropriate comeuppance as the law dictates.
It is not right that when 15 ‘hunters’ are killed in Uromi, the whole nation is under pressure, but the hunters that hunt human beings and destroy ancestral homes in Kebbi, Zamfara, Borno, Ondo, Ekiti, Benue, Ebonyi, Enugu, Delta, Edo, etc., do so knowing that they are untouchable and that the numbers they kill today, they can double and triple tomorrow and none of them will be brought to book.
Ko le werk rara!….
Onuwa Lucky Joseph is the CEO of Earl Glow Communications, an Abuja-based Integrated Marketing Communications and CSR Consultancy.