I ended last week’s column by urging Nigeria ruler Muhammadu Buhari to choose his options wisely in the current national crises over criminal cattle herdsmen.
Hopefully, if peace and national cohesion are the targets, a lot of influential figures around him share my opinion. Last week, Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed did not present himself as one such person.
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Speaking at a local Nigeria Union of Journalists event, he declared his support of the use of AK-47 rifles and other weapons by Fulani herdsman. He said it was to “defend themselves”, because the “society and government failed to protect them.”
To be fair, the governor was speaking in the context of the herders defending themselves against cattle rustlers. Strictly in that context, I would agree with him, just as I would agree in many similar cases where the government has failed to protect Nigerian citizens nationwide.
The problem is that Mohammed was lying. Or deliberately avoiding the truth. Among others, he attacked his Benue counterpart, Samuel Ortom, who had accused General Buhari of being partial in the matter and urged the federal government to allow citizens to carry guns.
He accused Mr. Ortom of having “started all this,” and echoed an old “accommodate your countrymen” line by Buhari himself three years ago.
Said Mohammed: “If you don’t accommodate other tribes, we are also accommodating your people in Bauchi and other places. We have so many Tiv people working and farming in Alkaleri, farming in Tafawa Balewa, farming in Bogoro local government areas of Bauchi. Has anyone asked them to go? We have not because it is their constitutional right to be there.”
And the problem is not cattle rustling. The Bauchi governor ought to have spoken to his children before attempting this approach. They would have told him that Benue citizens who live in, and farm in Bauchi, are not criminals and do not venture into the farms of other citizens or destroy them. And if they are undertaking such criminal activities, they should be prosecuted, not merely “asked to go.”
But here is the even more important thing that Governor Mohammed’s children would have told him: the local farmers in Benue and some other states are the ones who are finding their farms and communities overrun. They are not the ones appearing in Bauchi to destroy economic activities and leave their hosts destitute.
Think about this: The distance from Muhammed’s Bauchi to Ikot Akpaete, in Akwa Ibom State, is 677 kilometres; it is 536 from Kano to Otukpo, Benue State; 819 from Maradi, in Niger Republic to Ijebu-Ijesha, Ogun State; 931 from Sokoto to Port Harcourt, Rivers State; 946 from Geidam, Yobe State, to Ebelle, Edo State; 855 from Yauri, Kebbi State, to Toungo, in southern Adamawa State.
And remember that these numbers are driving distances, and includes the assumption is of motorable roads. In addition, being “motorable” presumes an element of safe, unmolested driving.
The problem is that driving in Nigeria now includes the hazard presented by, among others, criminal herdsmen.
Of greater importance, it is important to stress that when one says “driving distance” between one place and another, that is not the same as herding distance. For instance, a herdsman who arrives anywhere in Delta State from anywhere in Yobe, if he has really herded cattle, has traveled probably over 2000 kilometres because of the challenge of terrains and rivers and seasons.
It is with this in mind that I have previously argued that the principal challenge of these “modern” herdsmen is that they travel with the confidence of people who know where they are going and how to get there, as if they carry the same GPS and communication systems of drivers merely trying to get from one part of Abuja to another. Otherwise, there is no way for any man traversing the forests to get from Kano to Bayelsa.
And yet, into communities and property and farms those hundreds of miles away do arrive, at will, and demand that overrunning the peoples who live in them or own them not be challenged. They may be called cattle herdsmen, but hundreds of them are showing up in distant locations with no cattle at all, but with guns, and engaging in criminal activity that may include murder.
This is exactly what the “accommodate your countrymen” proponents, such as Governor Mohammed, must respond to. We must all agree on this common standard: under no circumstances should violent criminal activity be entertained because it compromises normal life and makes economic activity difficult, if not impossible.
To that end, criminal activity anywhere, if not brought under control, eventually makes normal life impossible everywhere. That includes any Tiv criminals in Benue or Bauchi, or any Benue or Bauchi criminals in any other state.
This is because the constitutional right to be in a place does not include the right to be a menace to anyone there. It is related to Governor’s Mohammed’s decision two months ago to spend over N6.1bn to build a new Government House. That is over $15millon dollars in a poor state which faces all kinds of challenges. Mohammed makes this a priority because his focus is on his desire for a palace befitting a king. But Bauchi is a poor state in a poor country. His people have far more needs than an exorbitant mansion for a greedy governor in a state where $1m can renovate the current property handsomely.
Hopefully, the Bauchi House of Assembly throws the proposal into the dust bin where it belongs. The point is that the governor’s ability to appease his taste for luxury does not make it right. The right he should be chasing on behalf of Bauchi people is that of right and wrong and social justice.
Similarly, Mohammed, of the PDP, and all the top figures in the All Progressives Congress and Northern Nigeria should be focusing on right and wrong, and the cause of unity and harmony in Nigeria.
Just as the greed and indolence of the Nigerian governing class has compromised its ability to serve the people in the past 60 years, so has their worship of hidden agendas prevented them from advancing the national interest.
In my view, it should not take a newspaper writer to advise a governor—any governor—that to advocate AK-47s and other dangerous weapons for any demographic does not promote the wellbeing of anyone. The danger is that if cattle herdsmen can acquire weapons, so can others. And if the population is pushed into arming itself, there is no Government House or House of Assembly safe enough for anyone. There is no airport safe enough for anyone to try to escape to Dubai.
Nigerians should be talking in terms of sustainable cultures and economic activity. We should be talking of children being able to get a formal education in a structured, productive economy. We must admit that the concept a nation state has consequences and responsibilities of which “countrymen” is only a part.
Does Nigeria really have a government? If so, now, in front of the whole world, is the time to show leadership.
This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials.
• @Sonala.Olumhense
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