By Jude Atupulazi
The recent killing of 16 Northern Nigeria travellers in Edo State by a vigilante group was indeed a very sad development. It came as a retaliation for the continued killing of Edo citizens by herdsmen to which the Federal Government of Nigeria failed to react.
How do I mean? For years now, starting from the time of former President Muhammadu Buhari, scores of Nigerians have been killed by those referred to as Fulani herdsmen in their own lands but throughout the time Buhari was in power for eight long years, not one of those killers was prosecuted and made to face the law. Even when a show was made of trying a few of them, like the one that bombed a motor park in Abuja, nothing was further heard soon after.
In some villages of the country, the owners of the land have fled, leaving their crops behind due to herdsmen’s attacks. These herdsmen would then occupy the villages without the security agencies moving in to sack them. That is why today you see some young men in parts of Anambra, for instance, doing the okada (tricycle) business and if you ask them why they have left their states to come here to do that kind of business they will tell you that they are running from herdsmen.
Some of them will even tell you that they are the only surviving members of their families. The abandonment of farms by owners has also contributed to the high cost of food stuffs in the country. Why would anyone in those places go to their farms to be killed?
Even when they don’t abandon the farms, the herders allow their cattle to eat the farmers’ crops. This has been a recurring tale in many states of the country yet to be ravaged by these herdsmen. It is now looking like the Fulani herdsmen are untouchables.
They kill and maim people at will and when anyone reports to the police nothing is done; no arrests are made. But once any of these killers is captured the same police will rush to save them and preach why jungle justice should not be tolerated.
Indeed, it was thought that after Buhari, this nonsense would stop but it has continued under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We are yet to see any herdsman arrested and tried in the court. Is it a case of Tinubu swearing an oath before Buhari not to touch the herdsmen so that he would be handed over power? We may not know for now, but the signs are ominous.
Thus, in a bid to safeguard themselves, many people in the various communities in the country are coming up with internal arrangements. Part of them is to set up vigilante groups to do the work of conventional security agencies which have refused to do their job.
This was the case in Edo State where not long ago, Fulani herdsmen had slaughtered villagers in their own land. Vigilante groups in that state then rallied to keep a watchful eye on certain movements by certain people.
And so it happened that they saw 16 people in a bus heading to the north in possession of dane guns and other weapons. Being northerners, their being armed set off alarm bells and they were soon killed and burnt.
Instant justice, you may say. It was a precipitate action that shouldn’t have been taken. But then the Edo people were angry and that’s Nigeria for you. Citizens are continually resorting to self-help, given government’s failure to act.
On the Edo killing, I think the Federal Government caused this, especially during the Buhari regime, as earlier mentioned. Herdsmen killed with gusto and in all of Buhari’s eight years, not a single herdsman was prosecuted. Even on the day the Benue State Government buried 72 of her citizens killed by herdsmen, I remember that Buhari never uttered a word, not to talk of visiting.
Even today the herdsmen are still on a killing spree and each bloody episode is followed by empty promises of apprehending them. What a country!
As I wrote this, there were unverified reports of a purported retaliatory killing, this time, of Igbos, in a bus in the northern city of Kano. It was over two days by the time I wrote this. A friend who had contacts in Kano told me security had been beefed up there, with soldiers in strategic positions.
This, he surmised, was an indication that something could have happened which they were trying to hush up. But then, assuming something did happen, I had not heard any condemnation of it by anyone outside Igbo Land. Why would anyone complain when Igbos are always the sacrificial lambs who pay for the actions of others.
So as we blame those who orchestrated the Edo killing, let’s also be blaming the Federal Government. No Nigerian is superior to another. The Edo killing happened because those at the receiving end decided to act by themselves since the concerned authorities are not acting.
I keep saying it that Buhari was the worst thing to happen to Nigeria. The country never witnessed a more sadistic and nepotistic government which contrived to divide Nigeria along ethnic and religious lines. It was the greatest legacy bequeathed to the country by his regime and it appears not yet dead.
Nigeria is a country of pretenders. As long as nothing happens to those claiming ownership of this country, everything is good and okay. But let anything happen to them or theirs and all hell is let loose. As I said, the Edo killing was reprehensive, especially if those killed were innocent hunters travelling to their state of origin for Salah.
Although some are now beginning to question why anyone would be travelling in a bus with guns if they did not mean any harm, some have also wondered why those victims could have left the vast forests in the north to come to the south to hunt. It sounds strange, truly, but then no one can vouch that they were really those behind the killings in Edo State. Without evidence, their killing was thus very regrettable.
However, as earlier stated, it was a result of pent up anger and frustration by Edo People who were watching their people killed by herdsmen without any arrests by the government. After the recent killing of some Edo People, I did not see their governor come out to fume and order a manhunt for the killers as he did in the aftermath of the killing of the hunters.
I did not hear President Tinubu issue a statement condemning the act and ordering the security agencies to track the killers. But now that those from the north have been killed, see the outrage by both the Edo State Governor and the Presidency. Even northern elders are now shouting blue murder and calling for the arrest of the killers of their brothers.
Yet all these people did not press for the killers of a tertiary institution Christian student, Miss Deborah Samuel, who was murdered in her school in Sokoto for acts perceived by the Muslim students to be against their religion. Those who killed her are still attending classes while some have graduated and Deborah is lying still in her lonely grave, crying out for justice.
It is thus really difficult in this country to look at things objectively without giving in to sentiments. While it may appear mean and heartless to be seen to be justifying the killing of anyone, previous cases of the senseless killing of Christians by Muslims in this country abound.
Wasn’t a man, Gideon Akaluka, killed and beheaded for allegedly ”desecrating” the Koran? Wasn’t a Christian woman killed for warning a Muslim not to perform ablutions in front of her shop at a peak business hour? Weren’t Christians killed in the north as a result of a book, ”Satanic Verses”, written by one Salman Rushdie and which was published in Europe? What connection did Nigerian Christians have with the publisher?
How many northern Islamic clerics condemned the killing of Nigerian Christians, mostly Igbos, at the time? How many of those who carried out the killings were apprehended and tried? You can now see why it often seems difficult for one to think objectively when certain things happen to certain people in this country.
Yes, no one in their right minds will support the killing of innocents, but all we ask is that the same outrage by the government and others following the retaliatory killing of members of one religion should also be replicated when those of another are killed.
That way, it will not always look like a case of ”we and them”. Had the government done what it should have done by preventing herdsmen from killing and sacking communities across the country and punishing those who do so, the Edo killing would surely not have happened and I would not be writing this.
