KILLINGS BY FULANI HERDERS MUST STOP NOW!

KILLINGS BY FULANI HERDERS MUST STOP NOW!

Terror was again unleashed on Benue State last Tuesday 24 April by suspected Fulani herders, while Governor Samuel Ortom was enjoying his vacation in a faraway country, China.

The terrorists touched God’s anointed and did His servant harm. Between 4.30am and 5:45 am, during an early morning Mass at St Ignatius Quasi parish of Ayar-Mbalom, Gwer East Local Government, these evil men had slaughtered two Catholic priests and no fewer than fifteen parishioners.

The clash between herders and farmers is not new in that part of the country and we condemn what it has degenerated into since the state’s  Anti Open Grazing Law came into effect last year.

What we cannot fathom is the reason for the attack. This has set us thinking: the herdsmen have some other surreptitious agenda they are pursuing.

Human life is sacred, but these herdsmen think otherwise. They pretend not to know that once life is snuffed out it can never be replaced. The dead don’t talk; they cannot lay claim to any rights, though human rights are obviously lacking in every sector of our national life.

All seems lost in a government that is not giving education, employing the youth and securing lives. Indeed, we are in the darkest period in the history of our country. Things have never been this bad for the citizenry. Nigeria is in a terrible mess.

Though it has been so tough and so rough, Nigerians still trudge on. But what do we make out of life that has become so cheap that it is priced a hundred lives for nothing. The land is blood-soaked and we care not that more blood is shed needlessly; humanness has seemingly deserted us all. “The more in blood,” William Shakespeare says in ‘Macbeth,’ “the more bloody.”

Not long ago, over one hundred persons were killed in the state, gruesomely murdered hardly had the mourners left the graveyard than more atrocities were perpetuated. The marauders ply their trade, coming for more blood.

The Buhari-led government has failed the majority. The government is blind to the desecration of the land. We would not have bothered much if this government had not promised security as one of its cardinal points. Now, President Buhari and his mighty men cannot protect us. More pained are we that the lives of our fellow citizens have been lost and the government, though not silent, is apparently unconcerned.

 Government’s inaction is culpable and we hereby appeal that if this administration cannot make our life better, it should not indulge in taking it.

The Nigerian has become an endangered species at home and abroad. If the government is incompetent of protecting those within its borders, how can it protect its nationals in faraway South Africa and other dangerous places of the world? Now, we dare ask, “Who is lazier, the youth or the Buhari government?”

We, however, refuse to concede defeat that the government could not face the satanic activities of the herders. That their evil has grown by leaps and bounds is quite evident. It has become “a son of the soil,” having acquired legitimacy through the body language of the President. The herders have been so emboldened that they think little of the authority of the President.  They  have become laws unto themselves, perpetrating evil unscrupulously.

The international community says the Fulani herdsmen are the third most dangerous terrorist group in the world, but the Buhari government is lost on that.  This same government gave the Biafran agitators, who did not have any record of killing, a bad name in order to hang them. Those agitators by their own definition are terrorists, not the Fulani herdsmen. This, indeed, is a case of using insecticide for some people and deodorant for some others.

We urge the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to rate national interest above personal or ethnic interest and do the needful in the area of security. The president must swing into  action and save Nigeria from impending doom.

The Nigeria security should be able to protect self and the citizens effectively.  Yielding to the uncivilised self-defence, proposed in some quarters, may set the country on the inglorious path Rwanda took. It would spell calamity for Africa and the world, bearing in mind the population of Nigeria.  In other words, we should allow those responsible for the security of our lives to do their job without executive interference. The police should be given an unbiased backing in fighting the Fulani herders’ insurgency. If possible, because of the gross incompetence displayed thus far, the President should consider replacing his security chiefs and advisers if only to prove that he is a forthright leader.

We are not very surprised that all the atrocities of the blood-sucking group are happening under the watch of the international community without any effort to condemn or help squash the menace.

We thought, by now, due sanctions would have been meted out to the culprits across board but the Nigerian  government has suddenly become dumb in the face of obviously overwhelming indictment in the killings, believing that the tide would subside.

Our hearts go to the Benue people. All of us are probably not safe in this country. We therefore do not know who is next.

We must all rise and speak against the genocide and ethnic cleansing taking place in Benue State and the entire middle-belt region.

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