Allegedly Stolen Cows And Fulani Vengeance : Rule Of Law And The Call For Mutual Coexistence
The Oasis Reporters
January 8, 2018
A Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association leader in Benue State has revealed why they attacked Benue communities, killing scores, burning and looting.
According to the Socio-cultural leader of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, Garus Gololo, the herdsmen were defending themselves from thieves who stole over 1000 of their cows, and that the attack was in retaliation.
The attack took the lives of the elderly, women and children, and did not bring their cows back to them, but has driven intense hate and revulsion towards the Fulani all over Nigeria and indeed the world.
Gololo had told BBC News Pidgin that trouble started when some people attacked Fulani herdsmen who were relocating with their cows from Benue state.
He said as they were relocating, over 1000 of their cows were stolen at Nengere.
“As we were relocating to Taraba through Nasarawa state, thieves came to steal 1000 cows from us at the border town of Nengere, so we fought them back,” Gololo stated.
According to him, the herdsmen were only defending themselves from thieves.
Going by Gololo’s statement, if it was in self defense, did it call for the murder of the innocent, weak, elderly men, women and children? Including arson?
Gololo did not say if any of the allegedly stolen 1,000 cows were recovered or whether they sought the intervention of the security agencies rather than taking the laws into their own hands to commit murder and arson. It is obvious that what is playing out is a game of mutually assured destruction which no side will win in the long run.
Conversely, the Fulani socio-cultural association, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, has distanced itself from the Benue killings and their perpetrators by condemning the recent attacks in Benue state, according to The Nation newspaper.
In a statement on Friday, January 5, by the national publicity secretary of the association, Alhaji Yusuf Ardo, the association said the killings are unfortunate and condemnable.
The group labeled the perpetrators as irresponsible elements.
Ardo described Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore as an association that upholds peace, love, unity and harmony in the country.
He said: “We are peace loving people, we believe in love for one another. Any Fulani pastoralist that doesn’t believe in peace is not part of us”, and urged the security agencies to bring the perpetrators of the incident to book.
He further called on herdsmen living in Benue and other parts of the country to remain calm and be law abiding.
The association urged the government to look into the crises in Adamawa, Taraba, Kaduna, Zamfara, Nasarawa, Benue and Plateau states with a view to having a lasting solution to issues arising from anti-grazing laws.
As matters stand, the mutually assured hatred and destruction between Fulani pastoralists and other tribes who are sedentary farmers might not end very soon while vengeful attacks and counter attacks seem set to continue unless positive steps are taken to stem the tide of hate that would further depopulate the region and destabilize the nation.
It is of the view of many concerned individuals that there must be a realization that the Fulani and the Middle Belt region should understand their peculiar circumstances.
One, the sedentary farming communities in the middle belt are Indigenous to the area and have been there from time immemorial.
Secondly, the Fulani pastoralists are a more recent immigration and have an inalienable right of citizenship as Nigerians with constitutional rights.
Later immigrants cannot claim land that they met Indigenous people living and farming on. But since in the dynamism of life and movement, many middle belt citizens have also emigrated to diverse lands, the pastoralists can negotiate, purchase or lease vacant land to rear their cattle in enclosed places because being peripatetic in nature with cows in tow would definitely lead to the devastation of farmlands and crops that may have been grown with bank loans. This is an unacceptable cause of deep seated animosity and strife.
There should also be a realization that the world over that animal husbandry through nomadism is no longer fashionable and comparative agriculture has proven that ranching is 50 times more profitable than nomadic herding.
Another aspect to look at is the issue of security. With ranching, protection for livestock is best guaranteed in a ranch, by the herders themselves and by invitations to security outfits to prevent cattle rustling, than free range nomadism over long distances across different regions.
Ranching will make it a lot easier to hygienically collect fresh milk and spin off a booming dairy industry that would give employment to millions of Nigerians rather than this dependency on foreign milk importation. Indeed Nigeria could begin to export tinned and powdered milk, earning foreign exchange for the country.
All of Nigeria’s farmlands and crops need protection as well as the human resource itself, since more people leaving the land in a declining crop output will equally affect the livestock industry. Not every Nigerian consumes beef. A lot more eat birds (white meat that has less cholesterol content than beef, better for Nigerians above 40 battling with illnesses associated with high blood pressure, diabetes and other related health conditions) etc.
Without a thriving crop production , the poultry industry for instance, would become unaffordable and go into decline.
Yet this is an industry that thrives mainly on the superabundant production of grains, which can be ruined within minutes just by grazing cows overseen by a few herdsmen backed by rifle power.
For the beverage, brewing, poultry(egg production with it’s use in the manufacture of vaccines and other medical drugs) etc industries, will suffer untold hardship without the grains from farmers.
This is the major reason why peace must be agreed upon by all parties concerned starting with the Fulani herdsmen agreeing on international best practices in the cattle industry for growth and prosperity, rather than death and destruction.
