A closer look at Suswam’s ‘goods’

The fact that whistle blowers are having field day, telling what should be told, is very clear to all discerning Nigerians. Also clear is the fact that we have grown so thick-skinned, after repeatedly hearing the mind-blowing sums being found on politicians and other civil servants, that we are no longer shocked by such discoveries. […]

The fact that whistle blowers are having field day, telling what should be told, is very clear to all discerning Nigerians. Also clear is the fact that we have grown so thick-skinned, after repeatedly hearing the mind-blowing sums being found on politicians and other civil servants, that we are no longer shocked by such discoveries.

This is why it would have been easy to dismiss the numerous signs of official looting found at the house of former governor of Benue State Gabriel Suswam, but for one thing. The arms found alongside his loot. The simple question here is what are the arms and ammunitions doing at his house?

Ever since the Boko Haram crisis became a full fledged insurgency, Nigerians have wondered how that rag-tag army of unemployed youths had transformed into the sophisticated, gun-wielding, bomb-making and town-destroying terrorists they had become. We have been asking about the sponsors and the trainers of these insurgents because their new-found ability to take up the might of our federal government and even annex some territories into an imaginary caliphate was inexplicable.

But even before these answers could be found, another brand of terrorism emerged from yet another section of the North. We soon found out that it wasn’t only Boko Haram murderers who had found the means to attack towns and spend hours killing, maiming and burning houses, without our military or police checkmating them. We learnt of a new phenomenon called Fulani hersdmen, and their first port of call was Benue state.

While Gabriel Suswan was still governor, this unidentified gunmen, who were nevertheless christened Fulani herdsmen, reportedly wreaked havoc on some Benue towns and villages. At a point in time, media reports showed that these ‘killer herdsmen’ were being assisted by helicopters with uniformed men from Benue skies.

When we questioned the ability of the local herdsman, whose life and soul was traditionally tied to his cattle, to suddenly afford guns and ammunitions, as well as the ability to use helicopters to commit massacres, we were called conspiracy theorists; who will not accept reality even if it’s staring them in the face.

Soon thereafter the ubiquitous herdsman appeared in Nasarawa state and all bloodshed committed thereafter was attributed to him. Then communities in South East Nigeria said the herdsmen had arrived and were killing and maiming there as well. Today it is the sad events in Southern Kaduna that are given the official stamp of the killer herdsman.

In the meantime cries of official protection for the unidentified murderers, also known as Fulani herdsmen, has been renting the air from media houses to church pulpits. They allege that the killers are enjoying  special immunity because their kinsmen is the current president.  We also witnessed some church leaders, ordering their followers to kill any Fulani herdsman they saw around their premises, because the government could not protect them otherwise.

While all this noise is going on, we are yet to see any proof that the terrorism and bloodshed in Southern Kaduna is indeed the handiwork of the infamous herdsman. Nor did we see any such proof when the same thing was alleged in Benue and parts of the Southeast.

But what we do have today, courtesy of the DSS raid on Suswam’s house are the several arms and ammunitions found at the former governor’s house. Is he a sponsor of terror? Did he have anything to do with the killings in Benue towns and villages that were blamed on some imaginary herdsmen?

The DSS must look deeper into the goods found on former governor Gabriel Suswan and find out what role he played in the insecurity and bloodshed that plagued his home state. His financial improprieties notwithstanding, the discovery of these dangerous weapons with him should be given great priority, because we need to know the architects and sponsors of the terrorism that has plagued our nation, needlessly, in the last few years.