By Paul Onomuakpokpo
It is now over two weeks since President Muhammadu Buhari ordered security operatives to arrest and prosecute illegal arm-bearers. The president first gave the order towards the end of last month during a National Security Council meeting attended by the defence minister, the service chiefs, among others. He repeated the order when he visited Nasarawa State this month.
Here, we are confronted with two possibilities. One is that the order has been fully complied with by security operatives, leading to the mass arrest and prosecution of illegal arm-bearers. The other is that the order has been completely disdained by security operatives. Sadly, the second possibility is the reality today. Nothing underscores this more than the fact that herdsmen who chiefly belong to the category of illegal arm-bearers are still on the prowl despite the presidential order. Indeed, the order has rather become a source of impetus to them to illegally bear arms and use them to inflict pain and death on their victims.
Since the order was given, there have not been reports of security operatives arresting and prosecuting herdsmen for illegally bearing arms. Rather, we have been inundated with reports of herdsmen unleashing more violence in different parts of the country. The order has not stopped herdsmen’s killings in Kaduna, Benue and Taraba States. And despite the order, herdsmen have been killing in the south-south and south-west. Just this week, there was the report of how herdsmen overran local government offices in Ondo State.
The president has demurred at the prospect of intervening in the crisis. Until recently, there was neither a word of caution nor action that showed his umbrage at the regular lunatic bouts of Fulani herdsmen. Therefore, we cannot be easily discharged of the suspicion that the president himself did not mean that the order should be executed when he gave it. As the chief patron of the cattle rearers, he could just have issued the order to distract a traumatised people from contemplating enduring solutions to the crisis spawned by herdsmen. But if he meant it, it is not likely to be executed since the officials of government who are supposed to do this have not hidden their sympathies for the herdsmen. Besides, we live in a country with many presidencies, with Buhari apparently heading the weakest of them. In this case, the Inspector General of Police, Idris Ibrahim, might have felt beholden to another presidency and not that of Buhari when he dismissed the crisis as a communal misunderstanding that did not demand the urgent attention of the Federal Government that the citizens were asking for. This probably explained his refusal to relocate to Benue as directed by Buhari. And this also accounts for the hubris he has demonstrated as he blamed Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom for the inefficiency of the police he is supervising. Again, it was the defence minister, Mansur Dan-Ali who declared that the killings were caused by herdsmen because their grazing routes were blocked. As far as Dan-Ali is concerned, Nigeria is one developmental backwater where there is no recourse to the law to seek redress. No, the aggrieved party, especially when he is a herdsman, must administer instant justice – by himself and through violence.
Thus, officials of government who are afflicted with a paralysis induced by their alignment with the argument of the herdsmen that they bear guns to defend themselves and their cows against rustlers cannot execute Buhari’s order. But what they failed to add, and which is clear to the discerning citizens, is that the guns are what the herdsmen use to rape , maim and kill farmers who ask why their crops should be destroyed because they must feed their cows. Consider the case of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, who at the weekend told visiting Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello who has offered to accommodate herdsmen that he asked the cattle rearers why they bear arms. Ogbeh said that their response was that they use the guns for their own defence and that of their cattle.
The absence of a counter-logic from Ogbeh is quite in sync with his sympathies for the herdsmen. After all, it was Ogbeh who whined that the nation has not done as much for herdsmen as it has done to incentivise owners of cassava farms. But Ogbeh and other government officials who are aligned with the argument of the herdsmen must accept the imperative of extending it . In other words, it is not only herdsmen who need guns to defend themselves against human threats to their life and business. After all, life has become so unsafe. There is no guarantee of protection from the state security operatives. This is why there is a proliferation of crime manifested in regular kidnapping, armed robbery, assassination, cultism, among others.
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