By Offor Evaristus
Nigeria is burning once again. Terrorism is on the increase. It seems we have forgotten the painful experiences of those years and the grief-stricken occurrences that are overwhelming our youths all over the world; the cups of suffering, bitterness and humiliation are still unsullied in our memory. The rampaging and inhuman kidnappers and cultists are killing, maiming and destroying both human life and hard-earned wealth of citizens of the country. Rapists, ritual killers, conmen and women are not left out in this rat race to doom and hell.
Even our political leaders have left civil servants searching for life’s meaning as unpaid salaries and retirements are entangled in the marsh of profligacy, official corruption and unconscionable attitudes of greed and selfishness. Uncountable but avoidable road accidents on our long-forgotten federal roads are taking their tolls of rivers of blood overflowing and wasting, and nobody seems to care. Nigerians are really in moments of anarchy, darkness, grief and trepidation caused by Nigerians of ill-willed senses and unconscionable hearts of demon.
Now coming down to the issue of the moment concerning the Fulani herders scattered in some parts of the middle belt, north and southern Nigeria, the story is the same. Terrorism! Terrorism!! Terrorism! Who will save us from these momentous terrifying, murderous, brutal and demonic assaults by those herders from hell. The pictures are dreadfully and horrifyingly threatening. It is blood and sorrow everywhere. These herders as terrorists and above-the-law criminals have continued to butcher innocent Nigerians all over the country, especially in the South east, Middle Belt, Adamawa, Delta, Taraba etc. Terrorists are inhumanly unmerciful, unkind and uncharitable sadists. Last year, some of them went into Nimbo and Akagbe Ugwu all in Enugu State, destroyed people’s farmlands, maimed and killed over twenty indigenes in the most callous manner, yet nothing has happened and no military Python Dance was declared.
Terrorists don’t show mercy, and they have continued to massacre Benue and Taraba indigenes and mainly Christians with absolute sadism and callous abandon. They don’t care about the pains of farmers losing both their lives and farm products. Terrorists on rampage, they are dealing with Southern Kaduna indigenes, chomping their crops, terrorising both the living and the dead as well as burning down hard-earned family houses, yet, both the
hurch and State have looked the other way. Our human rights and dignity mean nothing to them and to our political, traditional and ethnic leaders especially those of the North. Can’t they see that Rivers Niger and Nile are overflowing with our brothers and sisters’ blood and sweat because we are Christians and non-Fulani? Terrorists in the form of the dreaded Boko Haram, except that these herders don’t die instead they kill. They don’t throw bombs, instead their machetes and AK 47 rifles are as sharp and deadly as explosives. Have we lost our collective consciences?
Where are our human rights activists? Has the United Nations gone to the blues? What is President Trump doing or is he not aware of these continued cries of relatives over their slain dear ones? Will our town unions’ vigilance groups wait until all of us in the South and Middle Belt go down the bottomless pit before they put on their armour of integrity and militarism to defend their own? Where are our glamorously dressed traditional rulers and their prime ministers? Can’t they cry out to the world and the World Court and International Criminal Court? Can’t our Christian leaders cry to the Vatican and England? Where are our Liberation theologians, Christian Associations, the lawyers, journalists and opinion leaders? Shall we be condemned to death by these murderers by keeping mum and being less concerned? Are they killing goats and no more human beings? Can’t we ask questions on the inability of the all powerful military to initiate ‘’Cobra Dance” wherever these monsters are killing innocent people in their own land?
Can’t our legislators outlaw the activities of those rapacious and rancorous invaders from hell? Have we also lost our sense of the sacred and the import of human life and dignity? Is human life not from God again? Is Nigeria no more a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the different Conventions on political, social, economic and cultural rights? What is Amnesty International waiting for? Where are the Ohaneze Ndigbo and Oduduwa leaderships, and what are they waiting for? Are they waiting for the Fulani herders to kill all non-Fulani especially in the southern parts and the Middle Belt before they cry out to God and the world powers? Is it not suicidal to stand with hands akimbo, watching those angels of darkness diminish our rights and dignity without applying any concrete antidote to those invaders and neo-colonisers of our land?
Now the federal government is thinking of the best way to finalise the neo-colonisation of the whole South and the Middle Belt which the Fulani herders have already started, through the purported cattle colonies. The President and his cohorts can do it in the core north where most of the owners and herders of the cattle come from and not on our land. Our farmers are still searching for more farmlands, and the federal government is babble and gabble with colonies in the whole of the South. We don’t want this kind of claptrap that will cause much pain and grief to our people via colonisation of our lands. This is the time for our governors to live above board by coming together with the Ohaneze Ndigbo, South West, South-south and the Middle Belt to fashion out the best way of telling the northern oligarchy the truth about this country.
We can’t continue to live in this manner where racial killings go unabated. We must not forget the sole defence by the Ekiti governor who has gone to the extent of bringimg all traditional hunters in the state together for a total defence against such terrorists. This is patriotic, germane and incredibly satisfying. Can the other governors and regional elite wake up and think along this line.
It would surely be a sad thing, in spite of our much desired and worked for change and our belief in the authorities for real change, that what we get is herders’ terror and attendant woes, tears and anguish of innocent voters. Instead of good change, we are faced with a barrage of Fulani oligarchic detestable words and devices of doom and death, sectionalism, incarceration and hunting of guiltless agitators for freedom and equity.
Let us end this article with an Igbo adage that says that the sheep said that if she doesn’t dance well in the open, when it comes to her father’s house, she will begin to hop up at the thumping of the drums. Let the solidarity of people of good conscience begin now, no matter our religion and race, political or cultural divergences, to rise against the oligarchic cabal and religio-tribalists who have held us down for too long. God help us.
Rev. Fr. Offor writes from Enugu
