Beware the Dogs of War!

Gradually but surely, if nothing is done to stem the tide, we are inching our way to self-destruction. The Plateau mayhem in which over 200 people were brutally hacked down by pastoral terrorists was bad enough. What must frighten us even more is the resort to disinformation and fake news to escalate tensions and encourage […]

Gradually but surely, if nothing is done to stem the tide, we are inching our way to self-destruction. The Plateau mayhem in which over 200 people were brutally hacked down by pastoral terrorists was bad enough. What must frighten us even more is the resort to disinformation and fake news to escalate tensions and encourage blind reprisals.

The bell tolled for Zayyanu Shallah, a manager in the Department Of Universal Service and Provision Fund of the Nigerian Communications Commission, last week. He met his untimely death in a suspected reprisal attack following the Jos mayhem. The same fate befell his friend, Zayyanu AA Gwandu. Both were killed and their bodies set ablaze.The two friends were said to be travelling from Bauchi State and unexpectedly ran into the reprisal-seeking mob. 

This is the road to Rwanda. Unspeakable horror happens. The victims regroup and mount even more horrendous reprisals. Life becomes cheap; death even cheaper. Being born to either of the contending tribes is a death sentence. Imagine what the bereaved families must be going through! 

I received many graphic images on the Jos mayhem. Some were real, others cloned from other such disasters elsewhere in the world. Apparently, there were teams of cyber demons somewhere trying to escalate tensions and make an already bad situation worse. There are at least 91 million Nigerians with internet access, 75 percent of whom are on social media. Interpretation: Social media users in Nigeria are more than the populations of Ghana, Benin, Togo, Liberia and Sierra-Leone put together. Imagine the damage such a population could do if minded to cause confusion.

Foreign media are beginning to be wary of news from Nigeria’s social media because they have realised that mischief makers are investing in it big time. For example, according to one foreign media house, “A gruesome image … appears to show half a dozen people that were killed in the attacks. On closer inspection it becomes clear that the picture was not taken in Nigeria, and is actually the scene of a 2015 traffic accident in the Dominican Republic.”

Pastor WF Kumuyi of the Deeper Life Church has been warning the nation to beware of being goaded into fratricide: “All killings are bad, reprehensible and condemnable. But it shouldn’t be deliberately turned into an ethno-religious propaganda tool for mischievous political ends. There are certain persons or groups who would rather have the country go up in flames ….These killings benefit only them. Don’t fall for their antics!”

I acknowledge that there have been problems between farmers and herdsmen in the past but this brand of violence sweeping through the Middle-Belt of Nigeria has all the trademarks of foreign invasion. These killers are not your everyday Fulani herders, but well-armed terrorists with territorial ambitions. How come they have highly sophisticated weapons and operate in a military fashion? How come they take over the land of their victims?

The attacks in Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Zamfara, Adamawa and other states cannot just be blamed on desertification and competition for resources. International observers suspect that, “The largely Fulani terrorist group, FLM, which has joined with Islamic State, is apparently now seeking to bring the herdsmen’s grievances from Nigeria within its scope”. Those same sources have revealed that there are “380 million (estimated) unregistered small firearms in Nigeria, roughly two guns per person”.

I don’t care where those bandits come from – Libya or Mali, or whether they’re just taking advantage of sharing the Fulani ethnicity with Nigerian herdsmen. Their breaching of our border, depopulation of our communities and seizure of territory ought to have made the federal government declare war on them. There is an urgent need to adopt measures similar to that use in the North-East on invaded communities to dislodge the invaders from the 52 villages and return the displaced persons to their ancestral communities. All the affected states ought to have their own Civilian JTF immediately.

My heart bleeds for the victims. See how helpless the governors are. The need to have state police is even more urgent now. Those who don’t want Nigeria unbundled need to think again. And statements such as that attributed to the Minister of Defence to the effect that states should abolish anti-grazing laws, are unfortunate.

Way forward? Sheik Muhammad Nurudeen Lemu’s admonition at the last National Conference recommends itself: “There are many other Countries that have ethnic and religious diversity far greater than what we have here in Nigeria. But something that distinguishes us from them, be it Singapore, United States, they have been able to respect the rule of law so that any bigot, any nepotic individual who tramples on the right of anyone especially that of the minority, the rule of law will catch up. Satan will only find a hole if there is a crack in that rule of law.

“We come against the exploitation of religion and religious sentiments. We come against stereotyping, stigmatising and dehumanising of each other. We come against the use of religion as a political decoy and as a distraction from the critical things that bedevil our Nation.”

To my compatriots, please check the veracity of that tweet, WhatsApp message, video clip, text message, instagram etc before you share. Fake social media accounts often try to appear as if they are from legitimate news sites, so check that every account you share information from is genuine.