Go after criminals, don’t label herders

I was just amazed last week Monday when I read the statement from the Ondo State Government giving a one week notice to herders to vacate its forest reserves. This, I gathered, was due to incidences of kidnapping and banditry associated with kinsmen of the herders. Prominent citizens of the state had fallen into the hands of the bandits and kidnappers, who are suspected to be herders living in settlements. Despite denials, by the weekend, this war cry went beyond Ondo to neighbouring Oyo State, with the expected tragic consequences.

In Oyo State, a noted separatist and agitator for Oodua Republic, Sunday Igboho, visited the Igangan community in the Ibarapa North Local Government Area and took it upon himself to give herders, settled in the area for generations, a 7-day ultimatum to leave. When the ultimatum became public there was an outcry.  Despite a broadcast by the Oyo State Governor, Makinde, which was far more restrained, some misguided youths, edged on by the demagogic irredentist, Sunday Igboho, attacked the herders’ settlement and razed it to the ground. Many were killed, their herds desecrated and those who survived are still running around dazed in the forest hiding in fear for their lives. I listened to one of them who was interviewed on BBC Hausa service. His heart-wrenching account is really an indication of the failure of governance all round.

No doubt, the Igangan tragedy is a direct result of the spurious ultimatum given by Governor Akeredolu. It is a bogus ultimatum because the governor knows he cannot stop any citizen of Nigeria from living in Ondo State, as every law-abiding Nigerian has the inalienable right to live anywhere in the country without let or hindrance. Probably for reasons best known to him, the Ondo State governor resorted to rabble-rousing to up passions and engineer ethnic tensions. He knows very well that you cannot put an ethnic label to crime. Those herding settlements have been in those forests for as long as any living person can recall. And herding settlements are not exclusive to Nigeria. They are spread across many countries – from as far as Guinea to the Central Africa Republic.

Of course, there is the usual age-old farmer/herder problem, which communities have over time got evolved mechanisms to resolve them. Undoubtedly, the clashes have escalated in the last many years for many reasons and governments across the nation have been touting strategies to settle herders as means to stop them roaming about with their animals. Considering the fact that herders are key custodians of a national asset that contributes to the nation’s GDP, with their supply of meat and sundry dairy products, one would expect that their livelihood and that of their herds would be given a deserved attention. Unfortunately, what we have are just empty rhetoric, paper proposals and projects with nothing ever on the ground.

We have failed the herding communities. Majority of them are uneducated and their settlements devoid of any modern appurtenances. Their settlements are pre-historic in nature and outlook. The worst part is that the economic potentials of their herds, a heavy national asset, is left unexploited both for their own good and the nation at large. They are left running an important business in the most rudimentary fashion you can imagine, as their fathers and grandfathers have run them.

The forests, where they roam about with their cattle, are virtually ungoverned spaces. With the proliferation of small arms in the whole of the West African region, plus the availability of hard drugs, the herding communities living in the forests are vulnerable to the antics of bandits and rustlers. It is also no wonder that some of them, particularly those who have lost a stake in their way of life, took to crimes. And because they are adept to the ways of the forests their crimes are more difficult to detect and solve. But that’s for the security men to flush them out and prosecute them. It is not the business of communities or their leaders to evict their neighbours for the crimes others have committed.

It even baffled me that the eviction order came from none other than Governor Akeredolu a lawyer of over 40 years standing, and a thoroughbred one for that matter, having attained the rank of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) in 1998 – a title one earns by distinguishing himself in the legal profession. Though he began his legal career in the private sector in the Law firm of Olujinmi & Akeredolu, he is not a fresh face to public office in the Nigerian space – he was once the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), from 2008 to 2010 and he is known to have held office as Attorney-General and Commissioner of Justice, Ondo State, 1997-1999. Also his Law firm partner, Akin Olujinmi was once the Attorney- General and Minister of Justice of the Federation (2003-05). One, therefore, finds it rather incongruous for a public figure with such a pedigree and network to allow such an intemperate pronouncement from his office.

What is needed to be done now is for the federal government to act firmly, decisively, and with dispatch. Every Nigerian is entitled to the Nigerian space and should be protected to assert that right.