Buhari and Terror of Ethnic Militias

THE unending gyrations of ethnic militias across the country resulting in mass murder of innocent citizens have reached a stage deserving of an urgent national attention. In Taraba State, six soldiers were among scores killed by militiamen on April 28. Their eyes were gouged out and tongues cut off, in what appears to be an echo of the Ombatse cultkilling of security operatives in Nasarawa State in 2013, and the 1999 Odi mayhem, which provoked military reprisal.

Some media reports put the figure of the latest carnage at 100 when combined with the 30 persons massacred in two villages in the Barkin Ladi Local Government Area in Plateau State by Fulani herdsmen at about the same time. Soldiers reportedly have carried out revenge attacks in Tarok village in Taraba State, a charge Ikedichi Iweha, the spokesman for the Special Task Force, has denied.

The herdsmen, Iweha said, launched their attacks because of the alleged stealing of their cows numbering about 400. Such claims are not new. This and the persistent land disputes over grazing rights annually turn villages in Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau and Cross River states into mindless killing fields of Fulani nomads, who now carry AK-47 rifles in place of their traditional bows and arrows. In its 2014 report, the International Crisis Group estimated that 900 people were killed in the first half of the year in the North-Central and North-West regions, in communal violence.

Other geopolitical zones in the country are not immune from the spasms of terror unleashed by ethnic militias. In the South-South, the Niger Delta militants, most active during Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight-year presidency, are still bristling. In the run-up to the last elections, they vowed to return to the creeks (a euphemism for violence) if their kinsman, President Goodluck Jonathan, was not re-elected. Their activities for years in that region brought our country’s oil-dependent economy to its knees, amidst killings and kidnapping of citizens.

This vice swiftly spread to other parts of the country as some Bakassi Boys, a vigilante outfit, and unemployed youths in the South-East embraced it as a viable vocation. At a point, the whole of the South-East zone became a no-go area. The police were overwhelmed. It took a special military deployment in Abia and the adjoining states to restore normalcy to the area. Unfortunately, the country is not totally free from the vice-like grip of this evil, just as some members of the O’odua Peoples Congress in the South-West zone occasionally become a menace to public peace.

Evidently, the degeneracy is total all over the country. The activities of this broad range of ethnic militias question the authority of the Nigerian state, which has the exclusive preserve of ensuring law and order in the society. Regrettably, government has made a mess of its discharge of this critical statutory responsibility. Today, the police force is in tatters; and the lack of public confidence in it is seen in the proliferation of private security companies and guards. The sacking and trial of a former Inspector-General, Tafa Balogun, for corruptly enriching himself of about N17 billion, still remain a sticking sore against the institution.

This unwholesome condition prevails because the state has abdicated its responsibility to groups that stand out clearly as renegades or bandits. It is a challenge that the incoming Muhammadu Buhari administration has to face squarely. Interestingly, Buhari identifies corruption and insecurity as a twin monster that must be beheaded if the country is to make a fresh start in building a nation where rule of law reigns. Therefore, we expect him to erect a new internal security architecture that will regenerate our security outfits, especially the police and our intelligence agencies, so that they will carry out their functions creditably; and in the process end the activities of these ethnic recidivists.

Jonathan, like the Olusegun Obasanjo government, appropriately saw these ethnic militias as public enemies but failed to cut them to size. “The nation faces three fundamental security challenges posed by extremist groups: Boko Haram in the North, Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra in the South-East and the O’odua Peoples Congress in the South-West,” Jonathan had said in 2013 to mark Democracy Day.

Ironically, the same Jonathan awarded an oil pipeline protection contract to the OPC, shortly before the last elections; and officials of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps saddled with that duty became mere bystanders. Only abuse of office and subversion of national interest for selfish political gains could have informed this indiscretion.

At last Tuesday’s Council of State meeting, the last for Jonathan, insecurity was top on the agenda with the discussion of the technical committee’s report on grazing reserves in Nigeria, which Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue chaired.

Since the Fulani herdsmen have become a pack of baying hounds for being denied grazing rights in farmlands of communities in parts of the North-Central, acting on the Suswam report should be one of Buhari’s priorities. His immediate response is, therefore, needed as Nigeria has wasted enough blood of its citizens from clashes that have arisen from this mess.

Over a decade after the military invaded Odi village and Zaki Biam in Benue State in revenge for the killing of their men, with genocidal consequences, the country should avoid a return to these dark days. Let the Tarok decapitation of our soldiers by hoodlums, therefore be the last.