By Polycarp Onwubiko
Shamelessly, some Nigerians have put forth puerile, preposterous, harebrained, and ridiculous reasons for the unabated, mindless slaughtering of people in Christian communities in the name of supposed "farmers-herders clashes."
Commenting on the enormous
atrocities in Plateau State perpetrated by terrorists masquerading as herdsmen,
an evidently biased northerner stated that "these bandits (not sponsors of
Christian killers) are always ahead of the security agencies, and it is revenge
killings."
Why indulge in these
brazen-faced pretences? The fact remains that the serial, unabated mindless
slaughtering of people in southern Kaduna and the middle belt states carries
the imprint of heinous and genocidal planning and clinical execution, with
security agencies pretending to be helpless, citing the "difficult
terrains of the villages in Plateau State."
More astonishing is the
halfhearted proclivity of the federal government, with respect to its tepid and
feeble press statements on every massacre, even as it promises to "arrest
the perpetrators of the dastardly act." Who is fooling whom?
The nagging question has always been: how many of the Islamic militia terrorists were arrested, prosecuted, and executed for murder, or even jailed? Of course, none. Again, there is no serious discerning compulsive order to the owners of the cattle to establish ranches, as practiced in African countries and other parts of the world. Cattle business is undoubtedly a private venture, and those involved have to purchase expanses of land for building ranches; it is not the government's responsibility, as cattle owners would like to believe.
The Buhari administration did not pay attention to the critical issue of ranches, and his successor, Tinubu, has not left anybody in doubt that he would be following the ignoble trend, which is a recipe for disaster. He pays scant heed to the nationwide clarion calls for the restructuring of the lopsided Federation to restore realistic principles of a federal system of government, as practiced in the first republic. He is apparently beholden to the phalanx that stridently kicked against decentralized security architecture, which is an integral part of restructuring the badly structured governance template.
The serial murderers cannot
point to any real or perceived grievances by the people they are mindlessly
slaughtering; their modus operandi is clearly discerning, and it verges on the
Islamization agenda of the hegemonic caliphate. Having grabbed power by hook
and crook, Tinubu should be conscious of what history will have in stock for
him because he cannot stay in Aso Rock for eternity. Let those who are very
close to him see it as an obligation to advise him to leave whatever 'covenant
he has with the "caliphate colonialists and Northern Political Emirates
Establishment" and carve a niche for himself and his wife and children.
Polycarp Onwubiko Public Policy
Analyst.
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