Fulani Herdsmen and the Endless Killings

SATURDAY POLSCOPE 

Despite the loud hue and cry across the land over the mindless killings orchestrated by the ravaging Fulani herdsmen, the killings and bloodlettings have continued unabated. Not even the presence of a president in a state could enforce the sheathing of the swords. And lives continue to be wasted by these herdsmen. From Benue, through Taraba, to Nasarawa, up to Adamawa, Plateau and down to Delta, Ebonyi, Kogi etc., these herdsmen are still shoving people into their early graves with a bestial spirit and brute savagery. The case of Kogi is particularly ironical. Here is a state where the governor, Yahaya Bello has hurriedly kowtowed to the oligarchy by offering to provide cattle colonies for the herdsmen. But here is, having now to bury over 30 persons murdered by the same people he has been struggling to appease. And the nation’s rivers, as Shakespeare would put it in Macbeth, have all turned crimson red by the blood of innocent Nigerians..

“The multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red” The supplications in worship houses have been for God to deliver us all from this evil thralldom called Fulani herdsmen. And this has been a running prayer point, amidst the litany of worries we daily load God with in a country so blessed with everything, save gospelled leaders, to make us great.

Or how shall we explain the fact that despite the (belated) intervention of Mr President, the killings are still going on? Even when President Muhammadu Buhari was yet in Plateau State, the herdsmen did not observe any holiday from the killing field, which they have reduced Nigeria to. They were killing in Plateau villages while PMB was addressing residents in Jos.

Benue State has become the most vulnerable landscape with daily reports of gory killings and raw terrorism by the herdsmen.

Gov Samuel Ortom of Benue State has whined himself hoax over the killings. And nobody seems perturbed or so it seems.

Right now, the price of food stuff is on the rise because Benue farmers, the sustainers of the food basket of the nation, are not only chased out of their farms, even the harvested produce are now being crushed down by the cows of the herdsmen. What kind of oppression can be more than this?

A people can no longer go to their farms, nor live in their homes, all because of certain signature hounds called Fulani herdsmen.

I am at a loss  as to why neither the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association members have not been proscribed and its members herded into prison for trial, nor have they joined in the search for the killer herdsmen, that is if anyone is really searching for them.

But for the sole arrest of some herdsmen with military arms recently, nobody has been tried and jailed for the thousands of killings.

Sunday Vanguard in its last edition reported that 1,351 people have been killed in various forms of violence in Nigeria in the last ten weeks, in a country not officially declared to be at war.

While Boko Haram insurgents are still kicking many into graves, Fulani herdsmen are shooting and slaughtering people in their homes and farms, all unprovoked. And they all seem to be enjoying annoying and inexplicable immunity.

Some victims of these attacks have often claimed that their traducers do so, sometimes with the prodding of security operatives; or that the security men merely look away when the attackers launch their bullets on them. In one instance in Kigam village, near Kogi town in Kaduna State, the story was told of how the security men, pretending to be shielding helpless victims of such attacks in an improvised IDP, locked the natives up in a classroom in a community primary school, only for them to direct the attackers to open fire at them in the classrooms. Gosh!  What has become of us as a nation? Surely, if Chinua Achebe was yet alive, he would have written a revised edition of There was a Country.

If it is not a country where anything goes, apologies to Lt Gen Salihu Ibrahim (retd), former Chief of Army Staff, the untamed killing spree should have cost both the Inspector General of Police, and the Minister of Defence their jobs. What are they securing or defending if in ten weeks, 1,351 persons have been killed in a country not in war with another country? And nobody is in jail or even cell! Cry Beloved Country!

Worse still, for defying the instruction of the C-in-C to relocate to Benue State in the wake of the killings, we thought by now Mr Ibrahim Idris should have the prefix, former Inspector General, affixed to his name.

But it may not happen because the lives of 1,351 persons, not chickens or cows,  mean little or nothing to those in authority. Surely, if the son, daughter, or nephew or mother or cousin of one of the henchmen in Nigeria has been a victim of these herdsmen, the narrative would have changed.

That is why the wordings of one of the placards that greeted President Buhari in Benue makes a lot of summary sense. The placard said: “Every youth in Benue is a Yusuf”, a clear reference to the urgent and super care given to the son of the president who had a motorbike accident. He recently returned from a foreign treatment.

Who will rescue us, the sons and daughters of farmers and peasants?

 

Canticles…

Lawmakers: We Pray for them, They Prey on Us

I thought by now that, that loquacious senator from the confluence state would have moved a motion for the suspension or even expulsion of Senator Shehu Sani. I am surprised they have been quiet. Perhaps they are still planning the pattern and mode of sanction

Why will they suspend Shehu Sani?

Need you ask? Many people who have been suspended in the past did not bring as much embarrassment against the hallowed red chambers as Senator Sani has done.

I still don’t understand. What would be his offence?

For unveiling the tightly guided secret about the salaries and allowances of fellow senators.

But have many people including Professor Itse Sagay not shouted themselves hoax over the ungodly weight of the salaries of the lawmakers? But the lawmakers disputed his figures, called him names and tried to rattle the professor of Law?

What do you mean by “ungodly weight” anyway?

What a question! How do you explain that a fellow who practically works four days in a week earns N13.5 million allowance and N700,000 , all in every 30 days, while some other lesser mandarins who work five days a week, sometimes with harder tasks, earn N18,000 as minimum wage per month; yes, N18,000. Imagine the gap. How godly is that disparity? And have you noticed how empty those chambers can be most of the days they seat?

But all workers cannot earn equal pay anyway. This is not a socialist economy.

Yes, but the gaping disparity cannot be that wide. No wonder they have been keeping it as a secret. No wonder they take their election as a do-or-die duel. Can you imagine 90 people earning what the entire workforce in some six states would earn? And these people still receive salaries of N700,000 and then preside over N200 million worth of “constituency projects” per annum.  Haba! The so-called projects don’t have to be executed anyway. All it takes is an understanding with the MDA in charge of the “projects”. And when it ends up undone, it reappears in the following year’s budget, but the funds allocated to it, long gone. And the beat goes on. That’s how they roll: preying on us while we pray for them with our pious minds and spirits. Yet they say they are “Honourable” and “Distinguished”; gosh…. two most abused epithets in Nigeria.

You are making very sweeping comments. Look, Senator Sani made it clear that the said allowance is not just money for the boys. That the money has to be accounted for and retired accordingly. It is only the N700,000 that does not have to be accounted for.

If you believe that, then of all men, you are most naïve. What will they be buying every month to retire N13.5 million every month? Don’t you know that requirement has literally turned the Senate chamber into  a factory of fraud as all kinds of forged and fake receipts will be produced from their computer systems to explain away their huge and phoney expenses? Does anybody verify those receipts?

You don’t understand the enormity of social burden the senators and the House of Representative members bear. Do you know how their constituents pressure them with all kinds of requests ranging from paying rents to burial of parents or loved ones; providing feeding allowances to many homes; marriages, paying school fees of supporters’ children; down to paying for huge medical bills of constituents? Look, many of the lawmakers have even sold their personal properties in order to cope servicing the endless requests of their constituents. So in lambasting the lawmakers and calling them names, be conscious of their humongous responsibilities.

I don’t care how much pressure they get from their constituents. I am sure it is because the said constituents know that they (lawmakers) receive unjustifiable loot from the nation’s treasury, hence   they buffet them with an array of demands, just so they can partake from the feast of unleavened bread.

Do you know that many of these same lawmakers contrary to their public posture are actually saboteurs of the Nigerian state? Do you realise that the 2018 budget has not been passed, almost five months after, because of some petty personal issues? Do you realise also that the 2017 budget technically ends at the end of this month?

Do you see why Nigeria is not making progress? The budget may now be passed when the rains have come and construction cannot go on. Money would be gone, but the infrastructural gap in Nigeria remains and gets even wider.

Surely, the lawmakers have become a major prayer point for concerned Nigerians.

Pix: Saraki.jpg

Not the Zenith of Efficiency

I had struggled within the last one month to interpret the action of Zenith International Bank, a bank that has been minding my small-small savings since 1992. The temptation to describe it as fraud was strong. But on a second thought, I wondered why a mega Bank which recently declared a gross profit of N203 billion (before tax) for last year,  would attempt to pinch the paltry sum of N126,000 from a long and forbearing customer.  So is it inefficiency, bureaucracy or the other side of capitalism—which some have interpreted to mean taking the little you have to give to he/she who has so much? I still do not know how to place the action of the bank against me.

On 10th February, at about 10.57 am, I went to a plaza to buy a wedding gift item which price was N126,000. I paid with my Zenith Master card on a Zenith POS. Immediately I punched my PIN, I got the debit alert. But the cashier soon said the transaction was declined. No argument was strong enough to convince her, not even when she saw that I had been debited.  “Just go to your bank” was her polite, but firm, advice. It was a Saturday, so I left without the item I had meant to purchase and went to the wedding without the gift item.

I waited till Monday, February 12 when I visited a branch of the bank in Amuwo Odofin area of Lagos. I was made to fill a form of failed POS transaction, and later told that rectifying it could take between 15 to 30 days. The burden of Cashless Lagos!  I wondered why it should be that long, given that it was a Zenith Card used on a Zenith POS. But the Customer Service lady  was not in the mood for plenty of questions, adding only that it could take less time to rectify than she had said. Grudgingly, I left, wondering if the money “seized” was all I had and if it was a health emergency.

After waiting for 25 days, I had gone back to the bank asking to see the Manager when the Customer Service lady said she does not know why my money has not been returned to me. The young manager took the details of the transaction (a slip of failed transaction) and promised to follow up and revert accordingly. Five days after, there was no information, prompting a SMS to the said manager. He sounded clueless, in a way that suggests he forgot about my complaint,  urging me to be patient. Patient? A wealthy  bank had seized my N126,000 for over 37 days without interest and he says I should be patient? Haven’t I been patient enough or am I the Biblical Job?

So what kind of bureaucracy would make a customer’s complaint, caused by the bank itself, remain unattended to for over 37 days? If all else is confounding, not the fact that this professional levity is not a mark of the zenith of efficiency.

Not even in the Ministry of Establishment, the epicentre of bureaucracy, would such a tacky inefficiency be excused.

For those who lounge in wealth, N126,000 may mean little, but not for a poor reporter whose exit of every kobo from the ‘vault’ is clinically minded.

So before I take this matter to the Central Bank of Nigeria, Zenith Bank should respect itself and pay me back my money with all the accruing interest and documented apology.