Insecurity and a Few Root Causes – by Hf Dauda MoiSoro
February 09
15:53
2024
The Herdsmen
The Fulani herder was a welcomed member of every town in the North, and for a few areas, it was only seasonally. The Fulani woman comes to town to sell goods, mostly milk and other cattle byproducts. Their men come to trade in the cattle markets and buy household and cattle needs. They are usually light travelers and efficiently mobile. The teenage Fulani boys and girls are responsible for the cattle rearing/herding duties from AM to PM.
Whenever possible, they also come to spend their evenings in the towns to partake in the social activities they cannot find at home. This demarcation of responsibilities for the Fulani family is the backbone of their livelihood and existence.
Whenever the Fulani are in town, they are welcomed everywhere, by every household as equal members of the community! They can go to any house or family and ask for space to rest, eat, keep their belongings, stay overnight for free, seek audience with community heads, chiefs or emirs. They are given equal rights to use available water wells or watering holes, market spaces and stalls, as well as places of worship. They are full members of every cultural celebration and receive equal attention from viewers and organizers alike.
There is always a commercial and social relationship between the town farmers and the Fulani migrant cattle-rearer family. This relationship is not without conflict, but it is carefully managed and monitored by the leaders of both communities. Some occasional conflicts may get out of hand before a resolution but it is always resolved and adjudicated fairly and quickly. So it is acknowledged that the Fulani is a full member of the community.
The Fulani Today
When you destroy the above illustrated microcosm, and you fail to recognize the need to provide a replacement of the elements we have destroyed, then result will be circumstances none of us can predict. The community leaders, the political leaders and the Government have ignored the systemic erosion and outright destruction of the Fulani and his centuries old meaningful occupational engagement.
When you allow crime by hate motivated elements to destroy and take by force, the cattle the Fulani depends on for their livelihood. When you allow their villages, hamlets and way stations to be destroyed and burnt to ashes. When you see their demand for justice and compensation ignored. When you see civil servants and politicians owning thousands of cattle – and the Fulani is forced to now work for them as their rearer/herder for wages that are akin to slave labour. When the places they have lived and traded and tended for centuries are now off limits to them because one person feel he or she is powerful enough to get what he wants. When you chase the Fulani from their new village, after you have forced him to abandon the wild. Then you have pushed a man to the wall.
The escalation of the criminal enterprise of banditry and kidnappings is now the empire of every petty criminal because of the ‘copy-cat’ syndrome. Our youth have joined all manner of criminal gangs to escape penury and abject poverty. The result is now evident.
The Media Conspiracy
Tonye Barcanista wrote the following facts last week.
– two monarchs were killed in Ekiti.
– one was killed in Kwara and his wife abducted.
– the mainstream media quickly fingered Fulani herdsmen
– a few days later, 80yr old Yoruba man was arrested for the killings and kidnapping.
– bodies of victims were found, he confessed to operating an army of bandits, mostly from Mali.
– Yet, the Media never updated their stories nor corrected their wrong claims about the Fulani.
These facts are undisputed!!
Additional, two priests were kidnapped in plateau. The Fulani were fingered as the culprits by the same Media. Not long after, the perpetrators were arrested, and not a single Fulani herdsman was involved. All four suspects were members of the same church as the priests, including the financial secretary of the church who was found to be the mastermind.
The mainstream Media has an agenda, and it is a very dangerous one for Nigeria!
They are profiling the Fulani herdsmen as the only criminals in their publication while the actual criminals are their kin and their friends in power.
No need to describe the bold face lies they use to report from Benue state!
The Almajiri Today.
The Almajiri was a student. When he arrives from the village to learn in town, two things happen immediately. The first is he is introduced to a new mother in town. The Mallam will assign him to a family and the family will adopt him as their son. He will of course perform duties commensurate with a child of his age, and he turn will be fed three squares daily within the means of the family equal to the children in the family.
The second is that the Almajiri is assessed for suitability to live away from his parents as well his capacity to understand the Quran, to become a knowledgeable student and future teacher. He is then assigned to craftsman or artisan so that he could learn a skill. He is therefore trained within a calendar of daily and annual activities; The study suspended during the rainy farming season, and it is minimized during the cold periods. Kids who cannot fend for themselves or in need of parental supervision and support were not accepted.
Thus, when you remove the adoption element from the Almajiri system. When you remove the skills acquisition component of the Almajiri training and education. Then you cannot claim the system is working as it should; or that the system will produce adult Islamic scholars who are prepared to begin and support a family without resorting to means that are extra-legal. The mission of training and producing young adults who can be strong members of their community and contribute adequately to the growth and development of their communities have disappeared. What we see today are abused children who do not know anything besides brutal suffering. They grow up with a determined anger to collect a debt from a society that has largely left them to die on its streets.
Tribal Wars
Africans were conquered and colonized by the Europeans because we were never united as a race! Every village was fighting the next village and we automatically felt victorious when any calamity befalls the neighboring village or community. We fought over small patches of land and over women! And within our own communities, it was always the survival of the fittest or loyalty to authority by force or spirit! We never adopted the mantra of united we stand. The quest for independence momentarily forced us to unite and fight the Europeans. That unity begun evaporating the moment we were declared independent!
The sad picture of Nigeria today is the daily abuse on all efforts to unite Nigeria. We have divided Nigeria into ridiculously small pieces where one Man can emasculate the entire unit or state. Every tribe and tongue want their own “everything”. They want their own State, Governor, State Capital, Senator, State Religion and Community Police Force, Etc, etc!
We ignore the reality that unity is strength, that you cannot be secure when you alone stand in the midst of turmoil and weak leadership. The security we cherish is found in our collective numbers. We must dispense with tribalistic, regional, religious, and class distinctions. These distinctions have become part of the excuses used by our security and armed forces, thereby rendering them unable to confront the criminal enterprises head on. Violence is now assigned to your tribe, or religion, or region, or group.
36 of everything for Nigeria is too much! It is just too many units. Politicians are happy with it because it is the best vehicle for their ‘divide and rule’ posture!
Politicians and Immunity
The law provides order to a Nation, not assurance that it will be free!
“If you can’t sacrifice the bad and corrupt elements of a Nation, or at least consecrate them, then your law is absent, and the Nation with the best written laws will perish. The law is the beneficiary of our blood, not the creator of it. It is therefore our right, to change it when it is wrong. Any law that says a criminal can be his own judge is Useless! We must use whatever means necessary to change it!”
Remove the immunity clause for Governors!!
Our President is working hard to fix Nigeria while the Governors are working equally hard to destroy it. Instead of immunity for the Governors, it shall be best to hae a Governor’s petition board that is created in the office of the president with powers to consider and report infractions to the ICPC or EFCC for immediate prosecution. This can be polished into a new law that defines part of the state governor’s oath of office! We cannot continue to take One strong step forward nationally, and then watch our states take two steps backward. A powerful Nigerian politician is known to have said that – “If money cannot buy it in Nigeria, more money will buy it!” So, leadership is for sale in Nigeria.
The result of notorious exploitation of the poor is violence. We should not wait until that day! It is evident that politicians are among “the SABOTEURS OF NIGERIA’S PROGRESS! Once the nation starts to reform, these saboteurs will orchestrate protests, agitations, insurrections, threats and even crocodile tears to compel the reversal of such reforms. Nigerians must accept that all Nations trying to reform must endure and stay the course to reap the benefits.”
Youths and Employment
The primary reason Nigerians are inundated with criminal activities, kidnappings and banditry is the idleness of our youth and the absence of employment coupled with the prevailing extreme economic hardship. During Nigeria’s early days, most leaders viewed education as the only way to develop a great nation. Today’s leaders have little understanding of what is the best route to build a nation. They see politics as a means to itself and they use every means to keep the poor youth at bay by denying him the best education, or meaningful employment, or participation in the economic life of his community. The youths are now beggars in a rich and fantastically endowed nation.
Nigerians also believe that when you collect money in the bank, you are Wealthy. Unfortunately that is far from the truth. A rich person spends money he did not work for senselessly, most Nigerians with money fall into this category. You will see them buying land and building house that sit empty because a) they are too expensive for Nigerians, and b) the money is not for investment but rather it is stolen money that is buried in the ground to remove suspicion if it is seen sitting in a bank!
A wealthy person is the one who has ‘invested-money’, and that money is also making more money every minute. The wealthy person allows his money to work for him and his community, he provides employment, he provides scholarships and apprenticeships in his field of expertise. He does not spend his money on consumption and self-immolation. Few are doing commendable job of using wealth to develop their land. Unfortunately, many others are busy hiding money in foreign lands for Europeans to use at the expense of our own people who remain in penury and poverty. Those investing their wealth, for the good of all, must be encouraged and celebrated – for others to copy.
Whenever our clueless rich folks, together with the governing economic system decides to adopt an ‘enterprise economy’, it will produce a spectacular change in the growth and development of Nigeria. Nigerians must actively engage in an economy where people will take risks by investing their money, start new businesses, develop basic skills and create employment, etc. We can’t hide money in storage bunkers and in banks that do not understand that their duty is to provide loans to all Nigerians; yet expect Nigeria to grow out of poverty and penury or even live in peace and safety.
Criminal Justice System
The failure of the executive institutions to design a suitable criminal justice policy, the inability of the legislature to appropriately transform policies into laws, an abnormally designed Judiciary, plus an antiquated and inexpedient Policing and Correctional Services; that inhumanely warehouses those considered ‘innocent’ by the very law of the society that imprisons them – is a big blemish on our claim of a free and a democratic society.
According to Tosin Osasuna, “Four out of the five major legislative pieces that collectively regulate criminal justice in Nigeria-
* the Penal Code,
* the Criminal Code,
* the Criminal Procedure Act
* and the Evidence Act
are all substantially relics of colonial legislation and culture. All amendments have failed to effect a Nigerian-specific agenda on criminal Legislation.
The same can be said of the Police Act 1943, which was reenacted by a decree in 1967.
The Judiciary in terms of speed and quality of Justice does not fare better, as it takes an average of 5.9 years for a contested case to move from filling to delivery of justice (Peter Anyebe, 2012).
The Prisons are nothing but overwhelmed human warehouses, the actual capacity of the Nigerian prisons is about 50,153 but the prison currently holds 57,121 inmates. 39,577 (69%) of the total prison inmates are awaiting trial inmates (Nigerian Prison Service, 2014).”
While the innocent are suffering in our prisons and in the corridors of justice, the real Criminals, – those who destroy our commonwealth, who deny our youths employment, who have killed our industries, who abandoned the education of our children, and abdicated the responsibility to build a first class health care for all, – are free on our streets with bank accounts and assets that are mind boggling and insane!
There will be no security in our land until these injustices are corrected!
Subsidy Removal
Farouk Kperogi this week, declared that “The dramatic spikes we have seen in abductions for ransom all over the country are attributable to the rising tide of unheard-of deprivation that the removal of petrol subsidies has activated. And that’s just one auxiliary after-effect of the removal of petrol subsidies without a cushion or an alternative.”
Subsidy removal is a government mission to deny the activities of a few thieves by punishing all Nigerians. We can all argue the appropriateness of such action, but Nigerians are unanimous in the conclusion that the policy has failed. Time for the president to revisit the policy and the processes of implementation.
Finally
The root causes must be understood, confronted no matter how unpleasant and addressed.
We the people must rise up and tell them enough is enough! The days of cheering mediocrity in leadership must come to a crushing stop! Security will be ours if Nigerians pay attention in electing competent and patriotic leaders. Any society that grows nothing but poverty and unemployment will forever remain in a declining standard of existence, escorted by insecurity and strife.
We must start from the beginning. Those living at the expense of all Nigerians must be held to account and held to book. The party is over.
Hf Dauda MoiSoro
National Organizing Secretary AATSG.
9th February, 2024.
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