Assassination Attempt On Ortom: Not The First Time A Benue Governor Is Targeted, Why It Can’t Deliver Land To Bandits
The Oasis Reporters
March 21, 2021
The failed assassination attempt on Benue State governor, Dr.Samuel Orton is actually not the first time such a scenario is happening in the fertile and lush green vegetation of the middle belt state.
The former governor, Gabriel Suswan equally suffered the same fate, and he escaped it.
The reality is that assumed cattle herders seem to be on an agricultural jihad to displace crop farmers and take over the land.
The herdsmen militia still rely on their assumed dictum that might is right, failing to realize that ownership of AK47 rifles can trade places or made irrelevant.
The attack on Gov Samuel Ortom on Makurdi-Gboko Road, further exposes how precarious our security situation has become. Before Gov Ortom, it was Gov Zulum, leaders of subnational entities.
— Peter Obi (@PeterObi) March 21, 2021
Herdsmen are mostly Fulani who came to the territory now known to be Nigeria over two hundred years with increments on the back of a religious jihad led by Dan Fodio. Though religion was the marketed cover for the invasion, it became widely known that the hidden intention was slave trade and land grab.
A book written by a freed slave who became known as Bishop Samuel Ajàyi Crowther chronicled how his Oyo area Yoruba country was devastated by Fulani slavers who depopulated the region by capturing men, women and children that they sold to European slave traders.
Ajayi Crowther was lucky to have had an Anti Slavery Society warship intercept the slavers ship to set them free and arrest the slavers.
Some of the descendants of those Fulani slavers two hundreds years ago are suspected not to have fully integrated into honorable life and may be part of the much talked about kidnap for ransom gangs believed to be operating in Nigeria’s bushes.
The move to kill and take land is unfortunate especially when it is realized that herdsmen have done little or nothing to develop land, especially where they are preponderant and rear cattle growing their own grass or buying grass from willing sellers to feed their livestock.
Roaming in the wild and letting their cows eat up people’s crops is bound to cause anarchy. That would take sympathy and friendship away from them.
