Depopulation as culture

One thing that the legendary educationist and humanist, Tai Solarin, consistently warned us against was never to allow ourselves to get used to evil to such an extent that we become un-shockable. To live up to his own counsel, he regularly went round urban centres with makeshift coffins collecting corpses abandoned in open spaces and […]

One thing that the legendary educationist and humanist, Tai Solarin, consistently warned us against was never to allow ourselves to get used to evil to such an extent that we become un-shockable. To live up to his own counsel, he regularly went round urban centres with makeshift coffins collecting corpses abandoned in open spaces and depositing same at the closest local government secretariat.

Solarin declared that he was determined that our social conscience and sense of decency should not be permanently compromised as long as he lived. Many of us who idolised him miss hm dearly today. Corpses still litter our urban and rural centres. We have little respect for the living and even less for the dead. 

Boko Haram took monstrosity to another level with its widely circulated videos starring its monster-in-chief supervising decapitations and gloating over the guttural sound made by dying victims as their throats were slit. I stopped watching such horror clips a long time ago. Even now when I receive such gory clips via social media, I simply delete them unviewed. To what purpose would I be exposing myself to the kind of horror that would have unsettled the big screen personification of “Dracula”, Christopher Lee?

The more we shrug away incidents involving the needless loss of human lives, the more we inch our way towards social disintegration and loss of our collective humanity – which is why I can’t fathom why the federal government seems paralysed in dealing with the murderous escapades of so-called armed herdsmen who routinely depopulate whole communities with impunity as if we were in some stone age, survival-of-the-beastliest era.

For three days, marauding herdsmen entrenched their apocalyptic suzerainty over Miango town in Bassa local government area of Plateau State, the same area where soldiers from the 3 Armoured Division of the Nigerian Army had been deployed to enforce peace. Miango indigenes claimed that their hunters and youths had earlier been dispossessed of their hunting guns and machetes by the troops under the guise of ridding the community of dangerous weapons. So, they were left defenceless on doomsday.

A tragic incident such as this is a sure-fire propellant for conspiracy theories and allegations of ethnic cleansing. It beats the imagination how a band of armed herdsmen could beat a curfew and elude the military stationed in the troubled area, to kill and maim. Perception is everything. The victims have been strident on social media accusing the military of complicity. This is bad news because our armed forces are probably the most national of our federal institutions. When they are perceived as complicit in ethno-religious conflicts, their integrity takes a bashing that chips away at the very reason of their existence.

Those who have argued that revenge is the very life blood of Fulani herdsmen do that ethnic group grave disservice. How can revenge be an ethno-national motto in a country governed by laws? When the Italian Mafia over-reached itself by attempting to place gangsterism ahead of the Italian constitution, government and the people moved against them massively. When a tiny part is allowed to override the whole, the centre will give and shouts of, “To your tents, O tribesmen” will rent the air as has been the case now.

Real Fulani men and women are no different from other Nigerians. To my knowledge, there is no ethnic group that has murder as its motto. Yes, there are criminal elements in every group, including mine, but when a particular group seems above the law and is allowed to maim and kill at the drop of a hat, their victims are going to dig deep to ensure that they are not defenceless when the next attack happens. 

To date, despite the fact that so-called herdsmen have depopulated villages in many states of the federation, not one single culprit has been brought to justice by government. In these politically charged times, that is the wrongest signal any government can send to the generality of its citizens. Would it be acceptable if tomorrow some Miango indigenes invade a Fulani village and murder their wives and children? Certainly not.

I am pretty sure that the government is aware of the angst being expressed on social media over this culture of routine depopulation. In case the federal government needs further prodding, I recommend the comments of Citizen Tope Popoola, a former student leader and clergyman:

“Honestly, I am short of words to express my angst at what is happening in Plateau State right now. There was a curfew in place in a settlement. Yet the murderous goons defied it and killed people in a village and burnt down their homes. The rest of the people fled for their lives and were sheltered for protection in a school allegedly by security agents, only for the goons to come in again and waste all 29 of them. And the security men on duty were not able to apprehend even ONE of these murderers?

“Something does not add up here. If our army was able to penetrate Sambisa and degrade BH, what makes it difficult to fish out this band of criminal herdsmen? How come none of them has been arrested and prosecuted since they started their murderous rampage nationwide? Thankfully, the President has finally admitted that this is madness gone too far. Perhaps we can finally expect that somebody somewhere will DO SOMETHING?”

Can I have an Amen!