If the arisings from President Bola Tinubu’s meeting with stakeholders in Makurdi are realistically followed up and addressed, the federal government may well be closer to finding lasting solutions to the unceasing killings in Benue and other states. The meeting, which was part of the President’s interventions to restore peace in the troubled state, followed the killing of about 200 innocent people last week in Yelewata, Guma Local Government Area by militia herdsmen. Interestingly, the first shot on the seeming contradiction surrounding the killings was fired by the President himself.
President Tinubu must have taken his audience by surprise when after establishing the purpose of his visit, he turned to the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, and asked: “How come no one has been arrested for committing the heinous crime in Yelewata? Inspector-General of Police, where are the arrests? The criminals must be arrested immediately.”
The questions must have come against the background of an earlier order he gave security agencies to deploy to the state and arrest all perpetrators of the evil act on all sides of the conflict and prosecute them. Apparently unsatisfied with the progress in addressing the situation, the President further directed the Department of State Services (DSS) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to intensify surveillance, gather actionable intelligence, and collaborate with local communities to apprehend the perpetrators.
It is a good thing that President Tinubu interrogated the security chiefs in the open on the arrests made of those behind the dastardly killings in Benue State.
That has been the recurring but unresolved puzzle in the cycle of violence unleashed by herdsmen across the country. The relative ease with which herdsmen terrorists kill, maim and despoil communities and disappear into the thin air without detection has over the years, fuelled feelings of a sinister agenda. Curiously, matters have not been helped by the serial inability of the security agencies either to prevent such attacks or arrest the culprits to face the raw teeth of the law. That seems to have emboldened the attacker in their constant recourse to lawlessness.
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However, the arrests that were gleefully announced by the Benue State Police Command was that of 14 suspects who allegedly hijacked the peaceful protests by some youths against the killings. The police said the suspects obstructed a roadway in Apir, on the outskirts of Makurdi, forcefully stopped a truck driver and set it ablaze with the driver trapped inside. It is in the line of duty of the police to apprehend suspected culprits of that infraction.
But the promptness with which those arrests were made pales in the face of the inability of security agencies to arrest those behind the Yelewata mayhem. The criminals who poured petrol on innocent old men, women and children while sleeping in their homes and set them ablaze ought to be cooling off in the cells of the security agencies to imbue some confidence in their capacity to protect lives and properties of all persons.
Nothing of such is of public knowledge. That was the demand the president made of the security agencies and it goes without saying. By asking those probing questions, the president seemed to have set the tone for the resolution of the puzzles that shroud the invincibility of the herdsmen each time they kill, maim and despoil communities.
The President’s questions sat well with well-meaning Nigerians who had sought genuine answers to the herdsmen insurgency that regularly operates with an air of invincibility, undetected. It is a serious challenge to the nation’s security architecture that criminal herdsmen have continued to defy intelligence, operating at will in different parts of the country without their cell busted.
Now the President has spoken for Nigerians, hopes are high of something very positive. Arresting the culprits of the Benue mayhem is imperative to decode those behind the incessant attacks and killings by herdsmen in parts of the country often attributed to clashes over grazing lands. It is not for nothing that these attacks and killings follow the same predictable pattern.
Resolution of the sponsors, enablers and foot soldiers of these attacks holds the ace to President Tinubu’s assurance to end the cycle of bloodshed in the state, restore peace and convert the tragedy to prosperity.
The Chairman of the Benue State Council of Traditional Rulers and paramount ruler of Tiv, Prof. James Ayatse, threw up another troubling dimension to the killings that calls for serious attention. He told the audience that mischaracterising the violence as “herder-farmer clashes” only masked the true nature of the conflict.
Hear Ayatse: “We have grave concerns about the misinformation and misrepresentation of the security crisis in Benue state. Your Excellency, it’s not herder-farmer clashes, it is not communal clashes; it’s not reprisal attacks or skirmishes. It is this misinformation that has led to suggestions such as ‘remain tolerant, learn to live in peace with your neighbours’. What we are dealing with here in Benue is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocide invasion and land grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits which has been going on for decades and is worsening by the year.”
Tor Tiv said wrong diagnosis of an ailment will always lead to wrong treatment and that they are dealing with something far more sinister and not just learning to live with your neighbour but dealing with the war. The paramount ruler may have been referring to an earlier statement by the presidency on the Benue killings.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, had in a statement charged the state Governor, Hyacinth Alia, to, among others, convene reconciliation meetings and dialogue among warring parties to end the incessant bloodshed and bring lasting peace and harmonious co-existence between farmers, herders and communities.
Prof. Ayatse says these are not the real issues to contend with. He would want the President to have a proper reading of the situation for him to provide the right therapies to it.
The presentation of the paramount ruler struck a common chord with the issues raised by a former Minister of Defence, Theophilus Danjuma, when in March 2018 he accused the Armed Forces of aiding the ongoing killings in the country. Danjuma had said at the maiden convocation of Taraba State University: “There is an attempt at ethnic cleansing in the state and of course in some riverine and rural communities in Nigeria. Our armed forces are not neutral. They collude with the armed bandits to kill people, kill Nigerians. The Armed Forces guide their movement. They cover them. If you are depending on the Armed Forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one.”
Danjuma insisted that the ethnic cleansing in Taraba State and other rural communities must stop, otherwise Somalis will be a child’s play even as he called for self-defence.
So, the issues raised by the traditional ruler are not entirely new. That they have persisted signposts the failure of the leadership to realistically find closure to them. Sadly, the nation continues to pay the prize for inaction, acts of omission or commission.
If a former Minister of Defence could go public with similar allegations about seven years ago, then the issues are damn serious and weighty. Danjuma spoke when Muhammadu Buhari, a former military head of state, was in the saddle as civilian president.
There is every reason to take Danjuma seriously especially in issues of this nature. The issue has again come into the public domain with President Tinubu in charge. The way he goes about it, will determine the level of progress or lack of it in finding durable solutions to the cycle of killings that has put the nation on edge.
There are reports of the taking over and renaming of communities where militia herdsmen sacked the indigenous populations who now live in Internally Displaced Persons camps in states most prone to the attacks. Independent but unconfirmed sources had it that about 150 communities sacked in Plateau state are now being occupied by the militia herdsmen with some of the communities already renamed.
The issues are damn serious and complex. They have gone beyond the usual skirmishes between herders and their host communities. Expansionism and land grabbing are the leitmotif. It is vital to deconstruct the Benue narrative for better understanding of the issues involved.
Even as daunting as the allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide are, the first step to halting the scourge is to ensure that the criminals are not allowed to operate without consequences. It is the prime duty of the government to maintain law and order and protect lives and property.
If the motivation and operational strategies of militia herdsmen are decoded, it will be difficult for them to attack, kill and maim without being apprehended. Then, the nation would have been on a sure path to consign to the dust bin of history the cycle of bloodshed that is increasingly tilting it to the precipice.
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