By Felix Oboagwina
For some reason, President Muhammadu Buhari instructed security operatives to shoot on sighting anyone found in the forest bearing an AK47. It was his own way of responding to the frustrating tales of armed men rampantly visiting Nigerians with death, kidnapping, raping and plundering. In 2020, records showed armed bandits killed 2,539 Nigerians in 654 attacks. Some believe the figure undercounted actual casualties.
The 16 Northerners, identified as hunters who were lynched and burnt to death by an irate mob in Uromi, the quiet town of PDP’s Late Chief Tony Anenih and the Late Chief Anthony Enahoro who moved the first Motion for Nigeria’s Independence, may not all have borne AK47 assault rifles. But they fit other profiles of Fulani terrorists who had turned life in Edo State into a nightmare that necessitated locals to organise a vigilante team to safeguard the town at midnight.
They were Hausa-Fulani, alias “Aboki.” Southerners label any man from the Hausa-Fulani stock from the North or his cousin from another Sahelian region an “Aboki.”
They were strangers.
They possessed guns.
Over two dozen in number, they were travelling in a group, every one of them lying low, quiet and hidden underneath the tarpaulin of a Dangote Cement long-bed trailer. They were said to be travelling from Port Harcourt en route to Edo State to celebrate the Eid-Il-Kabir Muslim festival with their families in Kano. The driver and motorboy initially swore their vehicle conveyed only goods until vigilantes discovered the hidden human cargo.
More than anything else, carrying guns compromised their innocence. Less sophisticated than the AK47, the hunting guns the “hunters” bore, at least to the untrained eye, provoked the natives’ conclusion that these were the usual Fulani bad boys, whose kidnapping activities had turned Uromi and environs to hell. Native logic would say: “Gun na gun!” Don’t Dane guns kill? Eyewitnesses insist some of the guns found on them were AK47s. On being detected, one of these hiding wayfarers reportedly stabbed a Uromi vigilante. Things quickly went south thenceforth. In retaliation, an irate mob of indigenes gathered and dispensed jungle justice instantly. Sixteen “Abokis” were burnt alive. Even then, indigenes saved 10 others from the mob attack.
It is quite an unfortunate situation. Fatal errors were made. Criminal foreign Fulani constitute the enemy, not these local Hausa-Fulani. Foreign Fulani terrorises even the local Fulani, who have become victims of the terrorism of their immigrant cousins. If, as the Abokis claimed, they were truly en route to Kano, all the Uromi vigilantes should have done was escort them to the border to ensure the strangers did not disappear into the shrubs to wreak havoc. If in doubt, hand them over to the authorities.
Fears of reprisals in the North have set the country on edge. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not only issued a condemning statement, but he also ordered a manhunt for the Uromi mobsters. And they have been caught. Police say they have apprehended those behind the killing in a swift manhunt. No such manhunts have been launched or have unearthed Fulani terrorists killing in Niger, Enugu, Uzo-Uwani, Agatu, Edo, Kogi, Plateau and the entire Benue landscape. Not one.
Northern Emirs and governors have urged their citizens to show restraint even as they bayed for the killers’ blood for the shed blood. Edo’s Governor, Monday Okpebholo, immediately sacked the head of the state’s security outfit.
However, truth be told, Uromi-16 was an accident waiting to happen.
Like the rest of Esanland and Edo State, Uromi Town welcomes strangers. Hausa-Fulani “Abokis” rub shoulders with the locals as commercial motorbike “Okada” operators. They know the very nooks and crannies of the three traditional zones, Afenmailand, Edoland and Esanland. Hausas trade at their local markets, selling everything from onions to beef, to goats, to torchlights, to textiless. Locals patronise them indiscriminately in the spirit of one Nigeria and the global village. Up till this moment, locals would enter the bushes to make purchases of Fulani’s cows for ceremonies. Villagers randomly hire Northerners for farm labour.
However, as it happened in Ebonyi, Enugu, Agatu and other places, that fraternal symbiotic relationship quickly diminished. A few months back, Uromi women blocked the Benin-Auchi-Abuja highway to protest the dehumanising practices of the strangers. Locals were being raped on the farms. Abomination! Some women not only suffered rape, their rapists butchered them. Those resisting rape paid with death. Today, no Uromi or Esan woman goes to the farm alone. None! Some have abandoned farming altogether. Food prices have soared. Hunger bites like never before.
Like rampaging locusts, Fulani herders breeze into farms with their cattle and wipe out farmers’ sweat for an entire year. Their animals eat up plantings. As if that were not enough, these cowboys brazenly break down and break into barns of maize, yam, cassava, cocoyam and other stored produce that they feed to their cattle in a daredevil audacity. Farmers have been injured; many have been killed for resisting this wanton wastage of their plantings and harvests by these demons. News filters all over the place that if you touch these devourers, Nigerian troops and the Nigerian police, in the strangest twist to the entire affair, will swoop down upon the community, leaving the locals bathing in sorrows, tears and blood.
In fact, the thinking is rife that these hoodlums serve as foot soldiers, an advance battalion for the Fulani hegemonists’ dream of conquering the entire Nigeria to create an Islamic Caliphate. That agenda, some suspect, informed the genocide in Christian-dominated Southern Kaduna.
That is the background to Uromi-16.
Not only do these terrorists steal harvests, but they steal people too. Kidnapping has become a nightmare. Locals are abducted at random on the roads, the farms and their beds. Not even palaces provide a safe haven.
One traditional ruler in Esanland, the Onojie of Uzea Kingdom, laments the brazenness of Fulani kidnappers. Narrating his and his people’s ordeal, Onojie Solomon Itoya Iluobe II said: “Our wives go to farm; they are raped by Fulani herdsmen and set ablaze.
“I have paid ransom multiple times to Fulani herdsmen. They kidnapped my sister and others from my palace. I don’t want Fulani herdsmen in my community and forest anymore.”
Such is the background to Uromi-16.
But the story is the same nationwide. It appears that the Fulani Sultanate in the North has exported its worst to other ethnic nationalities cohabiting in the Nigerian space. Allowed that the vast majority of Fulani keep the law; however, bad eggs from that race have spoilt the whole basket. No one trusts the Fulani and the Aboki anymore. The time has come for Fulani kinsmen back home to summon these malevolent characters to return home for reorientation or for resettlement. Governor, Abubakar Ganduje nursed such a plan. It should be revived, adopted and implemented by Fulani majority states.
Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency worsened matters clearly. His eight years unfolded a Pan-Fulani agenda to invite his Fulani cousins from other nations to occupy Nigeria as their homestead. From 2015, under General “Pan-Fulani” Buhari’s regime, the Global Terrorism Index listed Fulani herdsmen as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world.
Does anyone have a monopoly on violence? No. Will Nigeria’s other 349 tribes and 190-210 million peace-loving Nigerians fold their arms and wait to be pillaged, slaughtered, terrorised and completely annihilated? No. They will rise up to contain an existential threat. And trust me, with a level playing field and with the authorities taking a neutral pose, Nigeria’s long-suffering non-Fulani 349 nationalities can dispense as much violence against the foreign Fulani as they have suffered. Even security chiefs have advocated self-help and self-preservation because “nobody is coming to help you.” They counsel Nigeria to liberalise access to arms in this undeclared state of emergency. Why? Not only are the regular troops overwhelmed, but the Military institution is compromised. In response have been formed various state and regional security outfits: CJTF, Amotekun, Ebubeagwu, etc.
However, a violent country is not one Nigerians want. Their vision, as the words of the just discarded National Anthem said, is “one nation bound in freedom, peace and unity.”
Will a peaceful nation happen?
The answer boils down to the civilised Fulani telling their misguided kinsmen to lay down their criminality, their violence and their AK47s, and embrace peaceful coexistence with neighbours. Without that, as the Uromi episode shows, the Fulani, and any “Aboki” bearing any resemblance to him, might just end up as an endangered species anywhere he shows up. God forbid!
OBOAGWINA IS AN AUTHOR, JOURNALIST AND PUBLISHER, REACHABLE VIA: foboagwina@gmail.com
