"We will write this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it takes." 11:51 AM - 15 Jul 2012
Today, under the leadership of President Buhari, Cattle and Cows are more valuable than human beings in Nigeria. The group, Miyetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) does often, and with righteous vigor, claim responsibility for the death and destructions visited on private farmlands and agrarian communities in the Middle-Belt, South-South, Niger-Delta, and some parts of the Western region of Nigeria. And they do so under the pretext of protecting their cattle or avenging the death and disappearance they experienced within their fleet. We know that is not true. Its all about the invasion, with the intent to conquer and commandeer. And the stakeholders are happy. As complicit and heartless as they are in the gruesome ethnic cleansing unfolding momentarily, they are seemingly unperturbed by the magnitude of the bloodshed eating away the once luscious heartland of the Benue/Plateau. It is about strength, and it matters. They have it. And they are not afraid to use it.
Normadic pastoring has been with us since the amalgamation. But herders are not known to traverse public parks or private farmlands with reckless abandon. Today, the reverse is the case. They invade public places, institutions of higher learning, and private farmlands with impunity. They do so, destroying cash crops, raping innocent women, and killing defenseless farmers who dare to stop them.
The malice is unquestionably apparent. And the intent is obvious. After the killing, they go about appropriating the now deserted farmlands and villages as conquered territories. That is the goal - the genesis of the animosity between the herders and the host communities all over Nigeria. To invade, kill, and occupy.
Reprisal attacks or cattle rustling are collectively offshoots of the indiscriminate destruction of commercial farms and private properties of native landowners by the guest herders. In other words, but for the malicious trespassing into private properties of the host communities, there wouldn't be any disappearance of cow or cattle. Therefore, President Buhari and MACBAN are having problems with the truth. They are grossly malevolent in their blames allocation analysis.
The malice is unquestionably apparent. And the intent is obvious. After the killing, they go about appropriating the now deserted farmlands and villages as conquered territories. That is the goal - the genesis of the animosity between the herders and the host communities all over Nigeria. To invade, kill, and occupy.
Reprisal attacks or cattle rustling are collectively offshoots of the indiscriminate destruction of commercial farms and private properties of native landowners by the guest herders. In other words, but for the malicious trespassing into private properties of the host communities, there wouldn't be any disappearance of cow or cattle. Therefore, President Buhari and MACBAN are having problems with the truth. They are grossly malevolent in their blames allocation analysis.
President Buhari knows or has a good understanding of the architects of the killings as well as their modus operandi. Governor El'Rufai of Kaduna State, the apostle of "... anyone, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it takes", is privy to the philosophy of 'invading with the intent to conquer and occupy' of his untouchable tribesmen. And the Almighty MACBAN is an unrepentant channel in the funding process - arming and providing logistics support to the armed wing of the privileged herders.
Mr. El'Rufai, the man I once dubbed on my Blog as the third Nigerian best prepared to govern this country after Papa Awo and Abubakar Atiku, is taking bigotry and unproductive propaganda to an obscene scale. In the past few days, he has populated the social media via his Facebook posting, with an unintelligible definition of fake news.
As you read, he is collaborating with a BBC apologist to perpetuate a false narrative in the social media that the gory pictures and videos streaming the lifeless bodies of butchered women and children all over Nigeria are not real. What makes it so fraudulent is that the Governor and his BBC "real news" reporter dwelled on isolated occurrences but failed to address the 7 a.m massacre that took place in Nimbo village in Enugu State on April 25, 2016, and the highly documented ethnic cleansing campaign that took place in Jos a few days ago.
His sensitizing concepts are akin to a page from Cambridge Analytical - pushing a dubious narrative to supplant substantive news, and qualifying them as mere innuendoes that must be rejected. As you read, someone is perfecting the same concepts in the United States of America - concorting unfounded allegations and random jottings as major news, and at the same time, discrediting the media and authentic news events as fake news. That is what Governor El'Rufai is perfecting right now in Nigeria.
Thanks to smartphones; we do not need a BBC reporter and Mr. Righteous El'Rufai to lecture us or to fool the global audience into swallowing their hocus-pocus that news and pictures of the atrocities of the Killer Herders in Nigeria are products of someones in imaginations.
Mr. El'Rufai, the man I once dubbed on my Blog as the third Nigerian best prepared to govern this country after Papa Awo and Abubakar Atiku, is taking bigotry and unproductive propaganda to an obscene scale. In the past few days, he has populated the social media via his Facebook posting, with an unintelligible definition of fake news.
As you read, he is collaborating with a BBC apologist to perpetuate a false narrative in the social media that the gory pictures and videos streaming the lifeless bodies of butchered women and children all over Nigeria are not real. What makes it so fraudulent is that the Governor and his BBC "real news" reporter dwelled on isolated occurrences but failed to address the 7 a.m massacre that took place in Nimbo village in Enugu State on April 25, 2016, and the highly documented ethnic cleansing campaign that took place in Jos a few days ago.
His sensitizing concepts are akin to a page from Cambridge Analytical - pushing a dubious narrative to supplant substantive news, and qualifying them as mere innuendoes that must be rejected. As you read, someone is perfecting the same concepts in the United States of America - concorting unfounded allegations and random jottings as major news, and at the same time, discrediting the media and authentic news events as fake news. That is what Governor El'Rufai is perfecting right now in Nigeria.
Thanks to smartphones; we do not need a BBC reporter and Mr. Righteous El'Rufai to lecture us or to fool the global audience into swallowing their hocus-pocus that news and pictures of the atrocities of the Killer Herders in Nigeria are products of someones in imaginations.
So, Nigerians should get over that childish illusion, to wit, that there is an administration out there at Abuja, genuinely worried, empathizing with them, feeling their pains, and ready to rein in on the Killer Herders, with a view to confining them to privately funded ranches.
As long as President Buhari remains in office, and El'Rufai remains his Outside Chief Counsellor on herders conquering mission, the killings and forced occupation of private farmlands will remain unabated.
A WAKE-UP CALL!
As long as President Buhari remains in office, and El'Rufai remains his Outside Chief Counsellor on herders conquering mission, the killings and forced occupation of private farmlands will remain unabated.
A WAKE-UP CALL!
There is no doubt, Nigerians are inherently docile. Please, let me rephrase that sentence. There is no doubt, the Non-Fulani tribes in Nigeria are inherently docile and sheepish. That is the main reason Nigeria is still one country. That is the main reason the stakeholders, the influential Cattle Merchants of Nigeria entertain no scruple importing and arming terrorist killers from neighboring countries.
Our docility induces the Herders and the alleged collaborators from Niger, Chad, and Mali to exude an aura of braggadocio, disdaining fear of counter-attacks, whenever they initiate attacks on any village or community. With the only exception so far of a community at Ile Ife, Osun State, where reprisal attack was spontaneous, ferocious, balanced, and with fatalities at both ends. Is that what President Buhari and Governor El'Rufai really want in Nigeria?
October 13, 2000, General Muhammadu Buhari, General Buba Marwa, Alhaji Aliko Muhammed, Alhaji Abdulrazak, and Alhaji Hassan matched to the Oyo State capital to confront Governor Adesina over a bogus allegation of killing and mass-burial of Fulani herdsmen at Saki, Oyo State. A claim later debunked by the State Commissioner of Police and the Director of DSS. Whereas, the reverse was actually the case. According to the two gentlemen, it was actually the herders that were engaged in killing and burial. The General Buhari who descended on the Great Oyo Empire on that October afternoon with his fellow merchants has not changed, even as a President.
September 15, 2017, President Buhari mobilized the entire Nigerian Armed Forces and invaded the South-Eastern States of Nigeria under Operation Python Dance, killing and maiming separatist agitators on sight. Today, neither the President nor his Service Chiefs can tell the world the whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu (the leader of IPOD) or the location of his cadaver. He decimated IPOD, while the protected privileged Fulani Killer Herdsmen remain invisible.
Today, members of the Boko Haram sects are wallowing in obscene largesse in the name of negotiating or agreeing to participate in peace initiatives. They are laughing their way to the banks with our hard earned oil money. But we decimated IPOD who are fighting a legitimate course unarmed.
It is no more a secret, the Herders and their heavily armed supporters within the Nigerian Armed Forces are waging a war of conquest in the Middle-Belt and the Southern regions of Nigeria, and we continue to call it another name.
February 14, 2018, one Efe, the leader if a vigilante group in a village at the outskirts of Benin City was shot to death execution-style by a member of the Nigeria Armed Forces. The tragic event became a spectacle fit for a gangsta movie when the apprehended Herdsmen who invaded and wrecked havoc on the victim's farmlands were set free by the same Military personnel who shot Efe to death.
The execution of Efe is not an isolated development. It was a similar story at Uguleshi in Agwu Local Government Area of Enugu State, where men in Military uniform stormed the village and whisked away 76 farmers for allegedly PLANNING A PROTEST against Herdsmen who turned their farmlands into one of the extorted kisses and killing fields. Yes, arrested for planning a protest. On the other hand, the real perpetrators of mayhem remain invisible to their so-called tight security networks.
Let me state for the record that the Hutu/Tutsi ethnic rivalry, prior to its escalation to the magnitude of mass execution and indiscriminate destruction of private properties, was not as egregious as the ongoing ethnic cleansing evolving presently in Nigeria.
Here is the truth, the Fulani tribe is a minority tribe in Nigeria and within the Nigeria Armed Forces. Granted, you occupy strategic positions all over our security networks, when push comes to shove, you will realize that it takes more willing hands to fire a mortar than to deploy cutlass, bows, and arrows. Please, don't push Nigeria into another civil war. Your intolerance is beyond the pale. No tribe is a pushover in the union.
REALITY CHECK!
The strident demands for RESTRUCTURING and TRUE FEDERALISM remains gravely so, because of the proven facts and documented evidence of your abuse of power.
You celebrate wastage. You glorify bloodshed. You perpetuate nepotism and gerontocracy as the norms rather than the exceptions. You play the race card and the religious card at your whims and fancies. And the culture of low expectations is your hallmark.
You and your folks made this country ungovernable. You squandered our oil money. You killed free education because you argued it won't benefit your region, but in the process, you created the Almajiri culture. You invented Boko Haram, now you are wasting our financial resources appeasing them and setting up shelters for the internally displaced persons (refugees in their own country). Only in Nigeria.
You defended Boko Haram killers throughout the Jonathan's Presidency. You unleashed Killer Herders on us, but turn around to blame their carnage on Libyan mercenaries. So, who makes you 'born to rule' or fit to be the President of this country?
And who makes you the landlord, the overseer or custodian of my Father's Land? Why do Nigerians of my ethnic and religious backgrounds have to appease you to secure a spot in the management of our Father's house? Why do we have to secede or contemplate secession from the union to find peace?
Why must the Biafran man seek to secede to experience economic breakthrough? Why must the people of Birom secede to be able to experience the sustainable use of their fertile land and rich culture? Why is the drumbeat of the renaissance of the Oduduwa Republic more potent now than before? And why is every tribe on the run from you?
Tell me, Mr. El'Rufai, what have you done lately for the Talakawa and the Almajiri population? I am the author of the "Integrative Model", a blueprint that a Nigerian President from the Niger Delta adopted to bring Western education to the thousands of the forgotten Talakawa and Almajiri that you and your oligarch folks created and abandoned.
So, who are you to gauge the Nigerian in us? Who are you to set the benchmark for my qualification or fit for a leadership position in Nigeria? Who makes you the Landlord of my Father's land? Who are you to question the eligibility of an Esan indigene for the Chairmanship position of the FCT or the Minister of Internal Affairs? Who are you to vet our qualifications for the Minister of Defense or the head of the EFCC? Why am we not fit to head the Department of Custom and Immigration?
We have the crude oil and the fertile land of the Benue Plateau. Yet, we're the one pleading for a piece of the pile. I am hunted. I am invaded. I am polluted. I am persecuted. And I am blacklisted for demanding you get your wastage and killing machines off my Father's land. Yes, I am the bigot, for identifying and condemning the bigotry in you.
The Nigerian Army, you have corrupted in fulfillment of your ethnic driven agenda. And the age-old esprit de corps, pride of the Armed Forces all over the world, you and your folks have irredeemably perverted in Nigeria.
There is no doubt, you have emerged as the most insecure President in the history of our amalgamation. You are fantastically tribalistic. Your prejudices against Non-Fulanis in the Nigerian Armed Forces and our security agencies aptly manifest in the lopsided constitution of your Security Advisory team, favoring your tribal folks. Take a look at the profile of your Service Chiefs. These aren't the traits of a real leader. If you can't trust me with power and authority, why must I trust you with my land and my oil?
Show me your conscience, Mr. President! Show me a shade of human kindness in you, if any. I love Nigeria, you don't. You love your cattle and the crude oil of the Niger Delta. Your bigotry knows no boundaries. Calling you an ethnic chauvinist is an understatement. Islam is not under attack or threat of attack in Nigeria. The Fulanis are loved and respected. You and your folks are the threat to peace and tolerance in Nigeria.
I am a patriot, brother. More patriotic than you and your folks. You are the problem; the enemy of peace and tolerance in Nigeria. You, Mr. Presdient, applauded the importation of Sharia Law into our legal system, promising to defend the import with your blood. Today, Zamfara State, the state that blazed the trail in the application of the Sharia Law is in turmoil, academically strangulated and economically bastardized. And a state of anomie is unfolding.
The herding of cattle is a private business. You do not have any right, legal or constitutional, to demarcate national funds for the establishment of cattle ranches anywhere in Nigeria. Period. You and all the El'Rufais of the Fulani tribe have knowingly elevated terrorism and ethnic cleansing campaign in Nigeria to a scale unseen in the history of cattle rearing in Nigeria. The blood of the innocent kids slaughtered in the past few days in Plateau State and throughout the Middle-Belt region and beyond is on the head of every cattle merchant who is aiding and abetting the Fulani Herder Killers on the lingering killing rampage all over Nigeria.
Mr. President, the time is now. Call your killer Herders to order. You are fighting a war you cannot win. This is not the era of Uthman Danfodio. The trust factor - the secrete of your dominance - is gone, and no one is ceding any land.
There is too much blood in the land and in your hands. You can't secure our borders and you can't protect lives at home. You're not in charge, and you're not capable of being in charge. Your infirmity is telltale - a disqualification per se. And your bigotry pronouncements over the years on the subject aren't just unconventional or an aberration, but deplorable and disqualifying. Therefore, you are no longer fit to be the President of this country, Nigeria. I was with you against President Jonathan. Today, my loyalty is in the air.
Alex Aidaghese is the author of "Debating the Rule of Law: Why I Stand With President Buhari" - NigeriaVillageSquare, January 31, 2016.
