for any tribe in Nigeria, not listening to anyone, lack of empathy for
the people who were killed and being killed in this whole Fulani militia
intimidation and killings of people in their ancestral home to force
them into negotiations, stupid arrogance and the assumption that because
they are in power they can do anything they want.
The recent case of federal government’s attempt to impose the grazing
reserve project on Benue State government and its people, without
consideration for the laws of the state simply shows how moronic some of
the people working and advising President Buhari are. How
First of all, there are hundreds of families in Refugee camps in Benue
State, and both the Benue state and federal government haven’t done much
about their plights. Their villages were attacked, some of these
villages set ablaze and burnt down, their fathers, mothers, brothers and
sisters, killed, and they are driven out to no man’s land, the refugee
camps around Makurdi and Benue State. Without resettling this people,
without bothering to, with no concrete plans at rebuilding and
resettling them, with so many people still hurting, the president’s
people, without consulting the Benue State government or caring about
the feelings of the people of Benue, quickly went to Benue to start
their cattle colony.
The strategy of this government in resolving this herdsmen/farmer
crisis, if there is any strategy at all, is utter disregard for farmers,
the people living in their ancestral home. The federal government of
President Muhammadu Buhari has never shied away from open support for
the Fulani herdsmen. It’s just a one way affairs, the farmers must give
the Fulani herdsmen land, they have no say in this. Is it not common
sense that no one would want to be the neighbor of their killers so
soon? It was Thucydides who wrote that, “people go to war out of honor,
fear and interest.” The federal government doesn’t study, so it wouldn’t
understand that it is out of honor, fear and interest, that is making
all the States reject the cattle colony they want to shove on their
throats.
The divisive herdsmen/farmers debate is still ongoing, but it is obvious
that the federal government is not willing to listen to anyone. They
don’t even want to convince anyone why the cattle colony or whatever
they call it, is good for the people where they are building them, or
engage with them, they just want to do it their own way. Not caring
about the views of the farming communities is a recipe for disaster.
Epictetus said, “we are not troubled by things, but by the opinion we
have of things.” The opinion of the farming communities of the Middle
Belt is that this whole thing is the politics of land grabbing, thanks
to the morons in Abuja, chaired by Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Audu
Ogbe, who without thinking refer to whatever plan they have for the
Fulani herdsmen as Cattle COLONY.
The federal government is doing everything wrongly on this whole
herdsmen/farmers situation. They are giving the impression or have
already given an impression that because the president is Fulani, he
wants a Fulani colony for his people, he is taking side with his people,
by overlooking atrocities committed in the name of herding and under the
guise of cattle rustling. The federal government is inflaming the
crisis. Some of the people advising President Buhari are not just
insensitive and lack savvy of understanding how things work, they make
President Buhari look so incompetent and even foolish.
What the herdsmen have done overtime on this issue is to use violence
and threats of violence as a means of negotiations. The federal
government seems to encourage that sort of behavior, that’s why instead
of ask the security apparatuses to do their jobs, they are negotiating
with all sorts of criminals. They are negotiating with Boko Haram,
bandits, Fulani herdsmen, people who have no genuine reason of picking
arms against the Nigerian State. How many of the negotiations have
worked?
President Buhari and his people should listen to everyone on this issue.
Their action on this whole establishment of grazing reserve in Benue
State without agreement of the Benue State government and its people
simply shows lack of respect to the people of Benue State. The people
are seeing it as an invasion, plot to colonize them, and it is not going
to work.