Re: Pastoralists, resolving a national dilemma

Gambo Dori used his “The Tuesday Column”, in the Daily Trust of December, 19 to present an overview of the main issues at stake, on the protracted farmers/pastoralists endemic conflicts which raging inferno seemed to have been on the increase across the country, since the desperate period of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential obsession at all cost.

The renowned columnist recommended some very good strategies, as well as suggesting short and long time measures, backed by some enforceable practical solutions that may likely eliminate, or perhaps, neutralize the cyclic occurrences and volatility of the crises.

However, going by the strange but new emerging emotional contours of this multidimensional conflict, I am of the opinion, that, because of the factorization of these new high level of interwoven displays of hypocrisy, insincerity, bigotry and partisanship, imposed by failed politicians in marketing this old local feud, it may be difficult to achieve Gambo Dori’s objective target, for lasting solutions, regardless of any comprehensive efforts and proposed measures to be taken in addressing this unending social problem.

The unavoidable and obvious facts, which I can categorically and empirically testify, without any doubts, or fear of contradictions, is that, the increasing escalation and upsurge in the farmers versus pastoralists’ communal conflicts, especially in the North-Central geopolitical zone, is politically contrived and motivated.

As an intervening contractual payoff return favour, by PDP stalwarts in the region for identifying with former President Goodluck Jonathan’s vaulting ambition, to win the presidential ticket at all cost, resulting in several underhanded tactics and strategies, which were spearheaded and intentionally formulated, by ex- Governor of Benue State, Gabriel Suswam, the arrowhead of the Jonathan Campaign Team Strategists, during which time ,he publicly declared in front of Statehouse Press Crew at the time, that, “unless the Fulani Herders were dislodged or forced out and relocated from Benue, Nasarawa, Kogi, Taraba, Kaduna and Niger States political axis, there will be no peace in these areas”.

This desperate but ominously dangerous pronouncement was advertised publicly and made in front of the World Press in Aso Rock Villa, virtually attended and covered by all the accredited newspapers, television and radio reporters in attendance.

Why then are we pretending to be indifferent now, as if we are all ignorant of this unusually, politically instigated lingering crisis?

It is ironical to observe the current attempts by the same political cliques, who failed to secure victory to the former President Goodluck Jonathan, now trying to hijack the crisis and rebrand it from its old identity of ‘Herders / Farmers Crisis’, into ‘a newly tagged product brand, they call a religious persecution in the “Middle Belt”, which they now vociferously advertise to their brainwashed, but captive local and foreign consumers, in order to present a fake alibi, to a globally biased ,subjective and negative audience?

In conclusion, I want to speak the truth and nothing but the truth, by asking, or inviting all patriotic Nigerians, to help in uncovering this secret but diabolical plot , through an investigative role , or by making the International Court Of Criminal Justice And Human Rights Abuse at the Haque, to fully participate in exposing the masterminds of the serial massacres of many innocent Fulanis at Keana, Makurdi, and in the organised killing fields in the Benue Valley and Agatu marshlands, for the sake of the senatorial and Presidential ambitions of PDP’s corrupt politicians and thieving chieftains.

I am sure, that, given the unacceptably and unjustified level of tyranny and coercive injustices against the politically weak and innocent victims, the Fulani Herders, the shocked world community will come to, belatedly discover and come to terms with the truth, that all the orchestrated campaigns of calumny against the Fulanis, were but superfluous propaganda, designed to negatively criminalize, blackmail and stigmatize them, with an accused label, to conceal, both the identity, as well the satanic motives and cryptic mission of the masterminds, behind these ungodly crime against the innocent Fulani Herders. Abdulkarim Nasarawa State. M. Abdullahi, Keffi,