Herdsmen and Innocent Blood: IG’s Attack on Reason
side his near handsome look, the present Inspector General of Police, Mr Ibrahim Idris, has hardly impressed me as a serious cop on whom I can put my trust. Too many times, his utterances have appeared like an affront to reason and common sense. He misfires too frequently, reminding me of the late Wada Nas, a man notorious for speaking before thinking and not the other way round, all in defence of equally the late Gen Sani Abacha.
The most recent vexatious declaration of the Chief Cop of the land, is that states wishing to pass anti-grazing law should first set up ranches before enacting such laws. I hardly see the wisdom in such a directive.
I have asked before, and it bears repetition here: why are all the people in government so keen about protecting the private interest and business of the herdsmen? Or is the business of cattle rearing not a private endeavour? Do these Fulani herdsmen even pay tax? Why is government overarched in projecting their interest and making it look like it is the nation’s live wire? Not even the crude oil in the Niger Delta enjoys that level of projection and protection by the federal government.
All these skewed attention is to the detriment of the comfort and even lives of others? Why is the IG not interested in the business pursuit of poultry farmers or those into piggery? Why all the attention on cattle rearers?
What’s more, how can an IG dictate to states what laws they should pass or dictate what conditions they must fulfil, before passing certain laws? How can he approximate the duties and rights of the state Houses of Assembly?
This was the same IG who when Benue people were mourning the loss of almost 80 persons to the callous herdsmen – declared that the crisis was an ethnic clash between the Benue people and the herders. Although he had apologized for the reckless statement, his conduct and utterances ever since then have gone further to reinforce the mindset that he meant what he said earlier. The herders have even killed some policemen but the IG cares little about that or so it seems.
Mr, IG, whose land will be used to establish the ranches and at whose cost? Is he saying that Cross River people, for instance, would surrender their land to establish ranches for some roaming Fulani men to dwell and gradually take over the surrounding lands and communities? And the resources of the people of Cross River would be deployed for the building of these ranches? Really? What kind of rubbish talk is that?
It is as annoying as the utterance of the colourless Minister of Defence, Mansur Mohammed Dan Ali, who had blamed the killings in Benue on the passage of the anti-open grazing Law arguing that there have always been pre-independence grazing routes across the country. He spoke heartlessly. And carelessly. He spoke as if even if it is true that grazing routes were blocked, the punishment should be pogrom on the owners of the land.
Dan Ali did not see the heinous crime in the killing of innocent people; all he saw is the assertion of the right of the people over their land, which to him, is a crime punishable by crude death from his kinsmen. As minister of Defence, Dan Ali was not worried about how pre-independence herdsmen who used to go about with shepherd Boy stick, now have sophisticated firearms, albeit illegally.
The IG and the Minister of Defence, and indeed almost all the top security chiefs in the country, who are all Fulani have handled the herders’ headache with unsatisfactory sincerity and devotion.
Under the duo of Idris and Dan Ali, life has become so cheap across the land. Many highways have become no-go areas as kidnappers could brazenly block the Benin-Ore highway or Kaduna-Abuja highway, for instance, in the blaring eyes of daylight, and harvest passengers into the bush as kidnap victims. And they fiddle away in inanities.
Nigerians are being killed like chickens across the land, be it by herdsmen, or by kidnappers, or by Boko Haram terrorists, or armed robbers, etc, and our defence chiefs are merely moping and uttering vexatious verbiages. Surely and steadily, they de-market the Buhari brand or whatever is left of it.
Aside Tafa Balogun, no other Inspector General of Police, in recent times, had been bathed with so much allegations of corruption and unprofessional acts. Yet this was the same Idris that tried to hound his predecessor, Solomon Arase over vehicles at the latter’s retirement. As Chinua Achebe would write, “those whose kernels were cracked for them by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble”.
Meanwhile, 110 girls are missing in Dapchir, Yobe State and our dear minister of Defence is neither heard nor seen. Only his men are trading blames. Dia ris God!