By Abdul-Azeez Suleiman
The arrest of Chinaza Philip, a 28 yrs old of Life and subsequent revelation of Chidibere Nwodibo of Life Camp, Abuja, one Auwa as members of his kidnapping gang has again exposed the truth that the Fulani is being wrongly vilified for a crime that has turned into a lucrative cross-sectional enterprise.
The fact that Chinaza, a South-Easterner, and his gang were arrested while transporting their victim to Kano in the North-West of Nigeria also lends credence to the claims that the kidnapping industry is not run by only one region, state, or, for that matter, one ethnic group or the other. On the contrary, it is a cross-regional issue that affect every one of us regardless of where we live or come from.
For this reason, the kidnapping problem must be confronted collectively with the entire will and resolve of the nation behind the effort. Failure to do so will indubitably mean that every effort made in isolation will defeat all other endeavours, and render the task the more difficult and futile.
Notwithstanding several such disclosures, the mystery still remains as to why fellow Nigerians living far from the North insist on shamelessly falsifying the truth by singling out the Fulani race as the guilty entity.
Of grave concern is that these mischievous discriminatory narratives do not draw distinctions between the Fulani as a race, or cattle herding as an occupation, from criminality.
To the makers of these mischievous accusations, it matters little that most Fulani are not cattle herders or that although most cattle herders in Nigeria are Fulani, there are others that are not, or that the fact that there are herdsmen that commit crimes does not make all cattle herders criminals.
Conclusively therefore, the general and pervasive insecurity currently being experienced across the northern region with the new dimension assumed by the hitherto easily containable herdsmen/farmers clashes, are deliberately orchestrated to achieve a dubious goal by certain regional interests.
It is no longer in doubt that the general and pervasive insecurity currently being experienced across the Northern region are part of a mega but clandestine plot spanning several years.
The current spate of killings and unrests are therefore not isolated incidents but are linked to a grand design to destabilize the North and bring her people to their knees by dividing them along artificial lines through exploiting ethnic and religious differences.
In particular, the herdsmen/farmers clashes have lingered on and off for the past 500 years, but there has never been a time when a particular race and religion was singled out for the blame as is the case now.
The various attempts now being made to destroy the North by instigating violence through exploiting cleavages of religious and ethnic nature to cause disharmony among the Hausa/Fulani population and facilitate the breakup of the region.
It is important here to draw the attention of the nation that for centuries, this land, north of the Niger, has been occupied and its treasures shared by its inhabitants.
From the highlands of Mambilla to the plains of Kagoro and Kontagora, to the hills and valleys of Shendam, farmers and herdsmen have called every space their home.
Like many communities across the world, the history of the North is replete with disputes and isolated incidents over land; but the fact that the people have for this long lived together and prospered, is a testimony to how far the region had come in accommodating its differences and agitations.
There is today a growing population that comes with a growing demand from grazing and farming. Added to this is the effect of climate change and desertification in the far North.
These natural phenomena, with roots in the short-sightedness of the post-first republic Northern leaders who destroyed the areas duly demarcated and gazetted well before independence in order to ensure convenience of herders while allowing sufficient allocation for farmers, are among the known causes of the current stretch over space.
For too long, enemies of the North, both foreign and local, have worked strenuously to ensure that the region remains backward, divided, weak, confused, and bewildered by myriads of challenges and problems.
In the pursuit of this, occasional misunderstandings dating back more than five centuries which were ordinarily resolved at the community level, are today manipulated and turned into avenues for the venting of pent-up tribal and religious jealousies resulting in heavy loss of lives and valuable resources.
The escalation of hitherto existing challenges like the herdsmen and farmers clashes which have sporadically and intermittently been going on for time immemorial, is one aspect of the plan to destabilize the North and decapitate it through exploiting internal weaknesses and cleavages.
We nevertheless believe that the current spate of killings and unrests are not isolated incidents but are linked to a grand design to destabilize the North and bring her people to their knees by dividing them along artificial lines through exploiting ethnic and religious differences.
It is no longer in doubt that the general and pervasive insecurity currently being experienced across the Northern region are part of a mega but clandestine plot spanning several years.
Irked by their failure to achieve their nefarious objectives, the agitators for secession and other commotions in this country quickly resorted to all forms of tactics and antics to introduce the fresh twists to the farmers/herdsmen skirmishes. Intruding groups of hate merchants embarked on various incitement missions that further inflamed rage. They even found it to their purpose to shake hands across rivers to exploit latent grievances accentuated by religious and ethnic cleavages, to cause widespread unrests in the North.
Doubtlessly, all the personalities that extended their hands for that shake across the Niger belong to a known cult of ardent enemies of the North and in particular. They, along with willing conscripts from the North have for the past four decades remained resolute in their support for anything aimed at the region’s ultimate destruction.
It is time for the cultured North to rise and demand the Federal and State Governments to immediately identify suitable lands across the country and create grazing reserves and cattle routes, and where resistance is shown, to expropriate such land as may be required for the purpose through resort to extant provisions of the Land Use Act and other related laws.
The North must also demand the proclamation of a National Policy on Grazing and Livestock Development (NPGLD) to cater for the needs of all the pastoral communities everywhere in the country.
It must insist on the immediate proclamation of a Special Intervention Initiative through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Ministries of Finance, National Planning, Agriculture and Water Resources, for supporting special livestock development policies and the establishment of special funds to support pastoral communities along the lines of the Anchor Borrowers Programme and other types of Federal Government interventions.
Northerners should as well call for the immediate setting up of a National Pastoralist Commission (NPC) to act on all matters affecting the wellbeing and interests of all citizens whose livelihoods depend on livestock rearing. Successive governments have found it expeditious to establish structures like OMPADEC, NDDC, Ministry of Niger Delta, the Amnesty Programme, etc aimed at resolving a specific set of challenges affecting specific communities in the South. There is therefore no justification whatsoever to resist or even question the creation of special initiatives to address the needs of herdsmen if these will lead to lasting peace and stability.
The Federal Government should, as a matter of urgency, use its powers to call media operators to order in their reporting of all security situations in the country, and to eschew the slanted reporting of events with greater bias against a particular ethnic group as is being witnessed in the herdsmen and farmers clashes.
Editorial policies and restraints imposed by ordinary decency and sanity must not be abandoned by the media establishment for sensational and often biased reporting that only inflame tensions in the country.
The North must also stand united to emphatically repudiate the vilification of one ethnic and religious group or the other for whatever reason or justification. In this light, the targeting of the entire Fulani for vilification, systematic dehumanization, profiling, alienation or any action that will render them object of attack and persecution, should be deemed not only immoral and illegal, but also abhorrent to northern sensibilities and ordinary decency and therefore unacceptable.
The targeting of any ethnic or religious group and singling it out for any negative action for all intents and purposes, is against both our laws and international law. Such acts are the prelude to genocide and ethnic cleansing and therefore, are actionable under international human rights and humanitarian law, as well as international criminal law.
The North, for the avoidance of doubt, is also quite familiar with the provisions of the Rome Statute in this respect, as well as the processes and outcomes of the various international tribunals and courts from the Nuremberg Tribunal to the recent tribunals that tried cases related to genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and other situations.
It is time also to warn the intruders south of the Niger that the North is neither afraid nor apprehensive of their designs. They may therefore shake hand across rivers and even across seas and oceans, but that will never affect Northern regional integrity and cohesion. The North will remain resolute in protecting its legacy and inherited responsibility to all northerners.
