Nigeria’s Banditry – How it all started
By Moddibo Dawobe – Ladduga
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Last week, we witnessed the genocide of about 50 innocent herders who were bombed by a supposed drone of the Nigerian Airforce base in Makurdi. The storyline was a sad, painful, and pathetic one. When calamities like this happen, what we usually talk about is the number of people killed – 27, 40, 50 etc. While I acknowledge that these numbers are big, people don’t remember that these innocently slain individuals, as significant as the numbers are, translate into hundreds more lives that are directly affected and millions that are indirectly affected.The innocent people whose livestock was stolen by the Benue state Livestock Guards were asked to illegally pay the sum of N27 million to get back their livestock which they did. Again, they were forced to load the cattle in trailers (as according to the guards, no livestock will be allowed to roam the land of Benue state) to Nasarawa state, which again they did! However, while they were offloading these animals, the ‘BOOM’ happened, leaving tens of innocent civilians dead, and other tens in dire need of emergency medical support. Of course, thousands of family members and friends are equally left in the agony of the loss.The Akwanaja community is in Doma Local Government area of Nasarawa state; a state that has for more than 2 decades hosted displaced herders from Benue, Plateau, and Taraba states. Whenever herders are forced to leave their original areas by Tiv farmer communities in Benue, Jukun in Taraba, and Birom and co. in Plateau states, Nasarawa hosted them and gave them places to stay and earn a living. A digital clap to Nasarawa state and its successive government. Many people believe that a Fulani man does not forgive and does not also forget! It is natural for people not to forget atrocities meted on them. This is scientific. But I don’t believe that the Fulani don’t forgive. Human beings forgive when forgiveness is sort! The Fulani has a history of forgiveness. They forgive people that have offended them, as long as they acknowledged the offense and pleaded for forgiveness. But in many situations, they are offended and are blamed on top of the offense meted on them, while the media helps to escalate this and give them a bad picture of being illiterate, barbaric, reckless, and dangerous. This makes them to surely harbor their agonies for years and given the slightest opportunity, they will engage on a revenge mission. We have seen this in Kaduna and some of the northcentral states of Plateau, Benue. Targeting and killing innocent Fulani by communities and government agencies in Nigeria did not start today. It dates decades! They have been killed, maimed, and severely extorted by the traditional leaders, security agencies, and worst of all, some corrupt Fulani associations. The Fulani cattle herders are a group of people that have existed for centuries doing their herding business without any recourse to causing any havoc to the communities they live with. They travel hundreds of miles from the south to the north, east to the west, looking for green vegetation and water for their livestock. As long as the livestock is able to secure enough fodder and water, then the family’s life is not threatened as they will be able to feed without concerns.Their lives style is simple. They sleep in huts made from thatches of grasses and leaves, close to their livestock. Their mattresses and pillows are also made from grasses and leaves. They do not have a permanent house to stay in. Environments that is favorable for their animals is their favorable environment and therefore they stay and live where the animals graze. They do not have access to a borehole for clean drinking water; they do not have access to a primary healthcare center or electricity. They drink from the streams where their livestock drink. Manage their sicknesses traditionally – many women and children die of treatable diseases.They are attached to nature and sleep most of the time outside, counting the stars until midnight, and making sure that no criminal is around to steal their livestock, before finally resigning into their huts to hide from the cold of the night.The Fulani herders have for centuries respected their neighbor; the farmer whose animal dung helped to grow his produce. They respect the farmer communities amidst whom they stay with. They address their occupational challenges of livestock destruction of land via traditional and community leaders. The situation has always been managed internally with no recourse to the police, the judiciary, or other government authorities. The MetamorphosisCriminality cuts across all tribes and ethnic groups. To contend and limit it depends on the capacity of the state authorities to cope with the situation by arresting and prosecuting culprits and perpetrators no matter their connections and no matter their ethnic influence. This seems to be lacking in Nigeria and especially regarding herder Fulani, whose majority did not go to school, both western and sometimes Islamic. Because of their level of education, they are treated as second-class citizens not just by government authorities, but also by communities at large.As they keep livestock, they stay in bushes where their livestock can get enough food to provide the family with enough milk. While bushes serve as a means of livelihood to the herders, criminals who intend to attack villagers of their belongings hide in these bushes and commit crimes, then melt into the dark of the bushes to escape. Unfortunately, a few meters away from the scene of the robbery incident, live a Fulani herder and his heads of animals.Failed Policing – my experienceAs we have a policing system that is myopic in their investigations, they simply use ‘common sense’ to arrive at their judgment that the crime was committed by the Fulani herder who stay (as mentioned) hundreds of meters away from the scenery of the robbery attack. The police work closely with the local vigilante who already considers the herder Fulani as criminals, or to frankly say it they criminalize them to keep the extortion going!Seven years ago, I was approached by Idrisa, a young Fulani herder whom I know their family well. Idrisa wanted me to support him in getting bail for his 60-year-old father who was arrested by the police and tagged for alleged armed robbery! Knowing Julde all my life, I will be surprised that he changes to be a criminal at the age of 70; what he did not do when he was 25 years. Julde was asked to pay N10 million to get bailed out! But bail is free?The police constable at the counter never thought I went to school or could speak English, due to the way I dressed. I heard him say to the corporal, “These people own millions of naira, but they don’t even know. Because of their illiteracy, once you put pressure on them, you can grab good money and complete the roofing of your house. They are easy to succumb to pressure and pay huge amounts to get bailed! Let’s arrest this one too and put pressure on him to get our own share before OC arrives. We can say he is a friend to Julde and therefore an accomplice. Then ask for a hundred thousand as bail charges,” said Bello, the police constable. Least to mention that Nigeria’s policing system is one of the most corrupt in the world. Many times, the police know that their victims are innocent, but as long as they will get something out of them, they will capitalize on that and continue ‘milking the cow’. The Fulani herders are easy targets and have had many cases of multiple extortions from the vigilante, the traditional leaders, the police, and the judiciary system, including lawyers that are hired to protect them later turn out to be their enemies due to their supposed level of education. Nobody seems to be concerned with what happened to them, including some filthy and corrupt associations of the herder Fulani – I will not mention names. I have witnessed this a hundred times in many parts of Nigeria and especially in the northcentral and northwest where we are presently experiencing the situation of banditry. In the year 2016 in Kudaru of Kauru LGA along Kaduna to Jos road, I met a Fulani herder stopped at a checkpoint by a police sergeant. When I noticed a truckload of Fulani-looking belongings, it dawned on me that something is fishy. From experience, millions of herder-folks have gone through this in Nigeria. I decided to stop and inquire. When I asked the Fulani herder, he told me that his offense was ‘he did not have a relocation permit’ to relocate from his old location to a new location! I was perplexed! I did not believe him and decided to ask the vehicle driver who seemingly looked a Hausa man. He narrated the same story to me that the Fulani herder does not have travel permit documents. They were stopped by the Police checkpoint and had been there for more than 3 hours! Because they had nothing in monetary form to buy their way out, the herder decided to give 3 goats, but the Police Sergeant refused to allow them to pass – 3 goats! With this preliminary information, I approached the policemen at the checkpoint to get clarification. Earlier the Sergeant was hesitant but finally told me that the Fulani herder ‘did not have his relocation permit’. ‘What is relocation permit and who issues it to people relocating?’ I asked, my eye directly on the police sergeant. I could see he was selecting the words he was voicing out of his mouth, trying to justify his deeds as well as being careful not to get implicated. To cut the story short, it was a scam and the police sergeant was trying to rob the herder Fulani of his hard-earned money! This innocent and law-abiding herder and his family were delayed for 3 hours and had to give out 3 goats as a bribe to the policeman before my intervention to stop it!This is just a fragment of what continues happening to thousands of Fulani herders in Nigeria. The security forces capitalize on their low level of exposure and rob them knowing fully that they leave this to God to judge!Farmer-herder clashesThe media and communities have blamed the herder Fulani for attacking and killing communities. Some neutral media can try to make inferences with phrases such as ‘reprisal attacks’, revenge attacks, etc. The question that needs answering is: ‘How can a person, sensible as he is, attack a community when he travels together with his entire wealth – livestock? How can you start a fight that will make you lose your entire life savings? Does this make any common sense? How can a ‘criminal’ rob people meters away from his own house just for the police to come and arrest him the day after? Why would a criminal commit a crime in front of his house? Why don’t our security forces ask themselves these questions? I think we need a psychologist to answer some of these questions.Looking at the herder Fulani and their livestock rearing, they stay in bushy areas where their livestock can have access to pasture and for them to have enough meat and milk for the family. However, criminals also use these types of locations as a hideout. When crimes as such occur, and people are robbed of their belongings, our police authorities do not use intelligence in investigating and apprehending culprits. They use ‘common sense’ and apprehend easy, soft targets like the herder Fulani, without clearly defining the connection between the crime committed and the profile of the suspects. For the police, a ‘robbery done a kilometer away from your home was done by you’ and nobody else!Many times, armed bandits have raided herders’ homes, raped their women, and robbed them of their belongings, before proceeding to the highways to execute additional robberies that make pages of our newspapers the next day! Nobody reports what happened to the Fulani herders because they are nobody, they are second-class citizens to the authorities and the media as well.The next day, the police appear on the robbery scene and as a usual practice, any person within a radius of a kilometer is a suspected culprit! I cannot imagine someone staging an armed robbery close to his house just to be interrogated the next day by security forces! This does not make much sense at all. At least not for me!When Police visit their homesteads, they don’t ask questions that will lead them to the criminals. They deceive the herder Fulani to follow them to the police station to say what they see or hear. Alas, at the station, they are taken behind the counter! For a herder Fulani, going behind the counter is next to being jailed and therefore he can give a cow to stay within the parameters of the police station and away from the counter and eventually the cell!The police know this weakness and therefore capitalize on it to make maximum extortion. This has been a continuous process wherever you have a Fulani herder with a police case across the country.Business syndicateBecause of this normalized use of ‘common sense’ and deliberate extortion strategy adopted by some of the security forces with the connivance of the vigilante, a business syndicate emerged. On the herders’ part, knowing that they will be extorted for no crime committed, whenever they see the police approaching their homes, they resort to running away and disappearing in the bushes! This helps to avoid being taken to the police station and paying millions of naira to get bailed out. Of course, they cannot run away with their livestock! For the police, running away is a justification of the herders’ criminality. But since they are unable to apprehend them, no more money for bail. Therefore, together with the vigilante and some community leaders, the police will take their livestock – of course, they can’t run away with their cattle, sheep, and goats. Without any justification for their actions or inactions, the police, and the vigilante will tag the livestock as ‘stolen livestock’ which will later be sold by the authorities; police, traditional leaders, and of course with the connivance of some filthy Fulani associations that claimed to protect the interest of the herders – Again, no mention of names!The rightful, innocent, and law-abiding livestock owners already tagged as criminals will be roaming from one person to the other to reclaim their livestock, and many times get extorted in the process again! This is sometimes the role of the security forces in criminalizing innocent herder Fulani. The role of our courts? This will be another pager?Resultant consequencesThe consequence of these actions and inactions is a total loss of means of livelihood to many Fulani herding communities across Nigeria. This has led to the loss of their economy in many states of northern Nigeria but with more devastation in states like Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, and Kogi, to mention a few.With no proper education and no skills for other agricultural activities such as land cultivation, many embraced positive coping mechanisms, and resort to menial jobs in towns like guarding, wheelbarrow pushing, nail-cutting, and water hawking, amongst others, to feed themselves and what remains of their families. However, a few of them resort to what I will call negative coping mechanism – crimes. After all, they have been tagged criminals when they were innocent, and nobody came to their aid! For them, now they have nothing to lose anymore, nothing!!It is a fact that the Fulani are brave people. They have stayed in the bushes and forests with their livestock for centuries and have protected the livestock from prey and raiders to keep the family’s economic base. This is an indicator that they are brave people if not the bravest in the country.Now this crop of people, brave, lion-hearted are left with no economic base, no livestock that they are skilled in producing, nothing to survive on, and no hope for justice! They are left with their bravery and a sophisticated rifle! This is a serious security challenge that all of us must devise a more advanced strategy to deal with. In the last five decades, government authorities, the herder Fulani associations, traditional leaders, and the Ulama and humanitarian actors; we have failed! We must wake up to the task ahead, which has overwhelmed our military forces despite their sophisticated technologies. This is the time for action.Modibbo Dawobe wrote in from Ladduga, the Kachia Grazing Reserve – Kaduna state
