In Nigeria, the people who live and do business in the South East are shellshocked every Monday. They are paralyzed with fear, unable to think clearly. They are between the devil and the deep blue sea and, in this state of irrational fear, cannot think clearly to find a way to deal with their fears. Dealing with the fear is as simple as understanding, confronting, and overcoming the sources of this fear. There are two main sources of the fear that we harbour in the South East at this moment.
Some seven years ago, southeasterners knew and lived with only a single source of fear. Their fear came from a band of cow herders who felt emboldened by the ascension of General Muhamadu Buhari to power. Buhari did not send them, as we say on the streets. Our President did not ask any herder to bully the general population with their animals, their ancient magic sticks, or the modern AK-47 guns that some of them sling across their shoulders as they roam the wild. Still, they proceeded to unleash a reign of terror across the nation, with singular focus on those who feed Nigeria. Rural farmers, men and women, are their victims. They abused farmers who confronted them for letting their cows into farmlands, and raped women and young girls for fun.
I came face-to-face with these farming terrorists three years ago in my village after learning what they did to a kinsman. Let’s call this kinsman Miller Kane, a nickname that he affected in the late 1960s. Three years ago, Kane was returning from our village farm when he saw and confronted three young Fulani herders who let their cows loose on his cassava farm. He apparently spoke harshly to them in his flawless Hausa, and that was how the fight started.
To establish the context of this fight, nine years ago, Miller Kane fled from the North back to his southern village. He resolved to begin a new life as a farmer after his lucky escape with his life when fanatics descended on stranger shops in many northern cities. Having lost his life’s savings to the religious vandals, he knew there was one place where he could go to remain safe – the South East village where he was born. Unfortunately, he did not stay long in peace before Mr. Buhari came to power and his Fulani kinsmen went wild. The likes of Kane could not understand how they could have no peace wherever they went in Nigeria, including their own state and village. Why were they being pursued to their father’s house in the village by relations of the same ethnoreligious group that brutalized them, destroyed their business, and disrupted their family life in northern Nigeria? He lost it at that point.
Village folks who witnessed the incident said they didn’t understand the harsh words that he spoke. They lived to regale people with the consequences. The cowboys, one of who slung an AK-47 on the shoulder, simply seized him, lifted him hands and foot and set him up horizontally with his back facing the sky. One of them drew a koboko with which he proceeded to lacerate his backside. None of the shellshocked villagers lifted a finger to help Kane. The boys finished their punishment, dropped the wailing Kane like a bag of rice, and sauntered off with their herd. I was told that they never uttered a word in response to Kane’s tirade or during the vicious flogging. They simply looked at themselves, answered to a seemingly practiced signal and did the dirty job.
The humiliation of Kane consolidated their power over the village. The herders had pitched their tents along a strategic bush path that led to our village farms. Depending on their mood for the day, my people may be prevented from going to their farms. Any unlucky female that ventured deep into the woods in search of firewood came home a different person. Many told their stories of rape. Others bore the wounded pride with equanimity, even when they were dying inside from the shame and disgrace of forced sexual violations. Stray domestic animals intermittently disappeared, and no questions were asked; my people knew in whose stomachs the animals were digesting.
All over the South East, the herders, in collaboration with village rascals, graduated from farmer-herder clashes to a different and more lucrative crime: robbery, kidnapping and assassinations. They have effectively frozen the South East in a proverbial place located between the devil and the deep blue sea. The devil are the cow hands who graduated from bullying rural farmer to serving as facilitators of highway robberies and kidnappings. The deep blue sea are our village rascals. One group of rascals aid the highway gangsters. The others joined and became radicalized “freedom fighters” of a ghost republic. Both groups eventually united as they returned to joined forces with the highway gangsters and unleash a reign of terror, taking advantage of the “sit-at-home” order imposed by the leadership of the ghost republic.
It is the action of the local rascals that has left the South East shellshocked. We expected them to play the role of protectors, as we often heard the leadership of the ghost republic declare. But they turned their guns and knives on the people they were expected to protect. The enemy became us. Although the Sahel gangsters still hover over the background as kidnappers (or in the foreground at Isi Uzo in Enugu), the bestiality and wickedness of misguided local rascals has kept the population of the South East sleeping with one eye open.
The way out of the problem is the responsibility of quite a good number of southeasterners who are not emotionally invested in the ghost republic. It is the responsibility of this group to think outside the box for a way to check this ill wind that blows in the South East every Monday. In the two Mondays that I witnessed life in the South East, it is obvious that fear is no longer the key that locks people indoors every Monday. It is the fear of fear.
Psychologists say that humans are born with only two innate fears – the fear of falling and fear of loud sounds. As the child grows, it begins to add more fears that must be avoided in the search for peace and balance. The problem, however, is that every serious attempt to avoid fear makes the fear more fearsome.
Take the case of the cattle herders. Contrary to what most people may think, the rest of Nigeria is not afraid of the Fulani herder. He is a vulnerable and insecure soul, every one of them. They live and thrive on two assurances – protection from the law and a sense of entitlement from the legend passed on by different generations that they bought Nigeria from the British colonialists. This assurance is perpetuated for as long as the Fulani is sustained in power. The power they grab provides them with the opportunity to plant protection nationwide for their itinerant clan members. It also gives them the opportunity to loot the enclave they have come to regard as an inheritance.
Take away the power and the Fulani will become a good citizen again. Which means the solution to the perennial problem of herder bullying of local farmers is stop the fear and seek a political solution.
The political solution that Nigeria needs to begin this journey to peace and prosperity is not at the roundtable. It is in the polling booth, a reality that the Fulani appreciates more than any other Nigerian ethnic group. Getting your voter’s card and ensuring that you vote is a cure for the anxiety that we all feel at this moment.