Each time I flip through the pages of newspapers and come across a headline news that reads: “Fulani Headsmen kill so so and so people, in so so and so town”, I always feel very tired and weary about such headline news and will quickly flip through past it.
The simple reason is because herdsmen attacks and killings across the length and breadth of the country has become a norm, rather than an exception. That is to say, when such bastardly acts have become an everyday occurrence, they no longer make news. News is something out of the way, something extraordinary. As is usually say in journalism, when a man bites dog, it becomes news, but when a dog bits man, it is not news.
Almost on a daily basis, the so-called Fulani herdsmen, armed to the teeth, with Ak 47 rifle, go on rampage, maim and kill several people in towns and villages, burn down houses and destroy farmlands. They cut or slit people’s throats like goats, and rip off their stomachs, and they will go scot free without anybody apprehending or arresting them.
Since January this year, no less than 3,000 Nigerians, men, women and children, have been slaughtered by these so-called Fulani herdsmen, with several thousand others fleeing their homes and living in many designated camps as internally displaced persons (IDPs).
And yet, we have a governmment that took an oath to protect lives and property of Nigerians, but whose top functionaries always look the other way or feel less concerned as the killings continue unabated.
When many people begin to express dismay at governmment’s indifférence, inability, or more specifically, their unwillingness to deal with the situation, they will issue à feable press release condemning the attacks, and there it ends. Nobody will do anything. The next day the “herdsmen” will launch attack on another village.
Another dimension to this so-called “Fulani herdsmen” attack was added last week when the invaders attacked a Catholic Church in Benue State during an early morning church service and killed two Reverend Fathers and seventeen other worshippers.
Before now, all they have been telling us was that the herdsmen killings across the country was due to “farmers-herdsmen misunderstandings”, or as a résultats of “communal clashes”, or réactions against the “anti-open grazing law” by the Benue State governmment. But how did all these concern those who had gone to worship their Creator in an early morning church service?
Ironically, while this gory évent was being reported by various news media and people were expressing disgust, our President was busy in a meeting with the governors of his political party fine-tuning arrangements on his campaign strategies for next year’s Presidential élections. The next day, he flew to Bauchi to tell his traumatised subjects that “I will win in 2019”!
I honestly agree with most commentators, including General T. Y. Danjuma, that what is currently happening in Benue and other states across the country is an ethnic cleansing, or at best, a religious war being coordiated by thé people at the top.
The Fulani Jihad that started in 1804, that was meant to overrun the whole of Nigeria was halted by Tiv people of Benue and Nasarawa states. Now that one of their kind is in power, who is àlso a religious fundamentalist, they want to continue thé journey in order to impose the Islamic religion on the whole of the country. That is the agenda.
