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 other 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 Edo State to celebrate the Eid-Il-Kabir Muslim festival with their families in Kano. The driver and motor-boy initially swore their vehicle conveyed only goods, until vigilantes discovered the hidden human cargoes.

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 an 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 a quite unfortunate situation. Fatal errors were made. Criminal foreign Fulani constitute the enemy, not these local Hausa-Fulani. Foreign Fulani terrorise even the local Fulani, who have become victims to 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.

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Fears of reprisals in the North have set the country on edge. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not only issued a condemning statement, he 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 textile. 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 in 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.

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.”

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 thieve harvests, 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 keeps the law, however, bad eggs from that race have spoilt the whole basket. No one trusts the Fulani and the Aboki anymore. 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 of 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 have the capacity to 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, the Military institution is compromised. In response have been formed the 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

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Okpebholo made the announcement while receiving a high-powered delegation from Kano State, led by Deputy Governor Aminu Abdulsalam Gwarzo in Benin.

He revealed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was deeply displeased with the tragic incident and was committed to ensuring the safety and security of all citizens.

“This incident has opened our eyes. We are now ready to address national issues and improve life for everyone,” Okpebholo said.

“The president is determined to get to the root of this. We want a lasting solution and justice for all those affected.

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“I also wish to inform you that the president and the Edo government have jointly set up a committee to uncover the underlying causes of the incident.

“The report you’ve submitted will guide us going forward and ensure we don’t need to trouble you further.

“The public will be kept informed of the committee’s activities.”

According to Okpebholo, Edo is home to peace-loving people.

“We welcome everyone who lives with us. Kano and Edo have enjoyed a strong history of commercial and industrial collaboration,” he added.

In his remarks, Gwarzo, expressed gratitude to Okpebholo for his earlier visit to Kano State and his efforts during the crisis.

“Our visit is to formally thank you for your peaceful intervention during the Uromi crisis and your solidarity with the people of Kano,” Gwarzo stated.

“Kano State set up a committee to verify the names, numbers, next of kin, and survivors. We are here to formally submit the final report.

“You assured us that justice will be served, and we believe you, Mr. Governor. We seek a transparent process to ensure fairness and accountability.

“Sixteen lives were lost—victims from five local government areas in Kano. Their families are looking to you for justice and closure.”

Okpebholo and the Kano delegation later visited Uromi, where they met with members of the Hausa community affected by the incident.

Source: NAN

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At first, I took little interest in the Uromi massacre for obvious reasons. How many of such assaults on our sensibilities do we suffer on a daily basis? So, any time I come across them – incessantly – on social media, especially when the authors are kind enough to warn viewers to beware, I delete and move away! To maintain one’s good health in today’s Nigeria, one must learn to go to Afghanistan, as writers call it. Afghanistanism means avoiding unfortunate issues or one that could land someone in trouble while preoccupying oneself with innocuous issues, especially from far away lands, to maintain one’s sanity and keep out of trouble.

Another reason why I initially avoided Uromi was because I knew that after the uproar and outrage that greeted it, it would soon pass into oblivion like many others before it in our recent past. Ours, like I have repeatedly said, is a country of one scandal, one moment. Before Uromi, we had the Natasha versus Akpabio “he wants to f*ck me” scandal, which is still trending. As if that and the lady’s kangaroo suspension were not bad enough, another leg of the macabre dance was the plot to recall her from office. Recall that it was in that same Kogi state that the attempt, in 2018, to recall another senator, Dino Melaye  “caput” on its head “yakata”, as they say.

The shenanigans of a vindictive recall process apart, the embarrassment of watching Kogi state officials fall one on top of the other devising all manner of machinations to keep Natasha away from her place of birth, despite her undisputable rights, under law, to freedom of movement, beggars belief! If sensible and reasonable persons still remain in the land of Yahaha Bello, this is the time for them to show up to be counted.

In the midst of the Natasha/Akpabio melodrama, a state of emergency was declared in Rivers state. An elected governor was removed – even though his election was fraught with mind-boggling irregularities – and a retired military officer was asked to take his place. The irony of the situation was lost on a president who was a pro-democracy activist and one of the arrowheads of the “military-must-go” struggle that cost ordinary as well as prominent Nigerians lives and limbs as well as properties and liberties.

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In the last one week alone we have had Uromi, the sack of the Board and Management of the NNPC, the president himself jetting out to France for what they call a two-week working visit, a euphemism for what I am sure you know! By now Nigerians must have become adept at reading the lips of their presidents! To divert attention, the president gave the people something to cheer for in the clean sweep at the NNPC. This is the proverbial case of someone who poured honey in your mouth but farted into it as well!

As if that was not a mouthful, news also broke that the government had introduced N10,000 and N5,000 denominations into the economy. I was at the Ikeja Shopping Mall when someone suddenly screamed, “They have killed us o! Tinubu has introduced N10,000 and N5,000 denominations o!” The whole place immediately went dead. Who does not know the implications of such a move? Mercifully, the CBN was quick to declare the information as fake news!

So, you can see that it is not every news that you must hurriedly react to if you want to keep your blood pressure in check. For me, Uromi was one of those. I simply sighed, “Aaah, Uromi, the birthplace of the Enahoros – Anthony and Peter – is in the news for the wrong reasons” and moved on. Anthony Enahoro moved the historic “Independence Now” motion in the emerging Nigerian parliament in 1953 while his brother, Peter Enahoro aka Peter Pan, remains one of the country’s most celebrated journalists and writers.

Uromi also reminded me of the Yoruba “iromi”; in my native Owo (Ogho) language where the “u” vowel starts everything, it will be pronounced “uromi”. My people say that the iromi/uromi dancing on top of the river has a drummer dictating the tunes beneath the river. In other words, there is no smoke without a fire. The massacre at Uromi could not have happened if there were no underlying causes. Unfortunately as with all things Nigeria, Nigeria immediately happened to efforts to unravel the truth. Were they innocent hunters? Or were they terrorists masquerading as such? We may never know; I mean, we may all never come to an agreement as to who they actually were.

Poverty of ideas, more than the poverty of substance, is the bane of the common man in Nigeria. Their day of liberty comes when they learn to loan one another commonsense.

Returning to Calpurnia, the Fulani – and their Hausa foot-soldiers – are the “princes” of the Nigerian federation while the others, especially those from the Middle Belt down to the South, are the “beggars”, difficult as this is to swallow. That is why the torrents of mindless butchering of the “beggars” have neither commanded the attention of the government nor gingered it to action. Whereas any slight calamity that happens to the “princes”, no matter how minute when compared with the horrendous afflictions visited on the “beggars” in the Middle Belt down to the South, is quickly and squarely attacked and addressed to the satisfaction of the “princes”, who must not be offended.

With one example after another ad nauseum, ad infinitum, this has become not a mistake or oversight but a deliberate and deliberative cause of action. It is politics at work – vile politics that value votes to human lives. Questions have been asked, which must be answered. Were the victims of the Uromi massacre really hunters armed with dane guns, killing lions and elephants, and found with lots of cash on them? Were there no forests in the North where they came from that they had to travel down South?  Were they appropriately documented with local authorities according to extant Forestry laws operating in those states?

Pardon me! Being an apostle of Peter Abelard, I ask questions so that I can understand. Says Abelard: “Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood”. Assuming they were terrorists as alleged – or they looked like one? Yes, there are laid down rules and regulations of bringing criminals to justice and self-help is itself a crime under our laws, but where criminality trumps the law again and again and the law lies prostrate, can we in clear conscience ask the people not to take their destiny into their own hands?

The very fact that vigilantes were set up under the nose of the government and were known to law means that the necessity for their operation has been established. The State has failed to protect its citizens. The citizens have been saddled with the duty of providing for themselves what the State has failed to provide. And this is the case, not only in Uromi but all over the country, including Kano where the unfortunate hunters were said to have originated from. And can we say, in clear conscience, that there have been no mistakes or unfortunate incidents in all those other places – even with the Federal Government’s security agencies? How many times have the Nigerian Air Force apologised for mistaking innocent villagers for terrorists and wiping them out in the process?

I did not watch the gory details of how the Uromi 16 met their end – and may never do because I cannot stand such spectacles. So, you may understand that I can never root for it – not even for my enemies. But, truth be told, Uromi is just one of such bestialities that is today a common occurrence all over the place. Once human essence is deprecated, any bestiality becomes sport. Ask them in Kosovo! Witness it in Rwanda! Have you forgotten Liberia and Sierra Leone?

That is why we must never fall into that pit; once we do, it is no longer a case of John Bunyan’s he that is down needs fear no fall. The further down we are; the farther still we fall. The more gory sights we witness every day, the more our sensibilities are dulled; moreso if the victims are people known to us. If we seek to address and redress this – which I think we should before we fall irretrievably into Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature – then, selectively serving justice is not the way to go. We shall be creating weightier problems if we travel that route.

Are we not aware of the perception in the Middle Belt and the South that the “princely” status of the North has prevented the criminals in its midst from being brought to book? What, then, is the remedy left for the victims? A skewed justice system that dispenses justice with fear and favour cannot serve the course of justice. If we cry for peace from now till Armageddon without serving justice, like Peter Tosh crooned, we shall only be wasting our time. Worse than Uromi lurks around the corner.

The symptoms of a failed state are there for us all to see. Non-state actors challenge the State for control and sovereignty over its territory. Citizens have taken over tasks that the government is statutorily assigned to perform. Citizens’ confidence in the government is at its lowest ebb. Poverty, criminality, and corruption bestride the polity like a colossus. In the face of all of these, the judiciary, touted as the last hope of the common man, lies prostrate.

Google says the symptoms of a failed state include “the presence of an insurgency, extreme political corruption, overwhelming crime rates suggestive of an incapacitated police force; an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics…”.  Which of these is not present in our country today? In the same way Rome was not built in a day, our problems did not just spring up in 2023 but they have steadily and stealthily crept upon us, right from Independence, like a thief in the night (Proverbs 6: 6 – 11).

If you think what we experience today is the worst, note that it doesn’t get better here; it gets worse. Our best years are always behind us. It promises to remain so until the people gain the class consciousness that victim-on-victim violence is not the solution. The repraisals threatened by misguided Northern youths fit into that narrative. The oppressors are not touched and the oppression of the oppressed is not mitigated. Instead, we have a vicious cycle of people who should forge a common front to fight their oppressors leaving the oppressors and fighting to liquidate one another, as was the case with the enemies of Jehoshaphat fought to liquidate one another without Jehoshaphat himself lifting a finger (2 Chronicles 20: 20-37).

Poverty of ideas, more than the poverty of substance, is the bane of the common man in Nigeria. Their day of liberty comes when they learn to loan one another commonsense.

*Bolawole (turnpot@gmail.com 0807 552 5533), former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of the Westerner newsmagazine. He writes the “ON THE LORD’S DAY” column in the Sunday Tribune and “TREASURES” column in the New Telegraph newspapers. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.

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They were allegedly murdered by a vigilance group at Uromi, Edo while on their way to Kano.

He made the pledge when, in company of his Kano State counterpart, Abba Yusuf, he paid a condolence visit to the families of the late hunters at Torankawa in Kano State.

“We are making arrangements to provide compensation to all the victims affected by this incident,” he said.

Okpebholo commended the people of Kano State for remaining calm in spite of the situation.

“I also commend the good people of Kano State and the entire north for not taking the law into their own hands  and carry out reprisal attacks,” he said.

He prayed for the repose of the souls  of  the late hunters.

“We are here to commiserate with the  families of the dead.

“We assure you that the perpetrators  will be brought to justice.

“May Almighty God forgive the souls of the victims and reward them with paradise,” he said.

The Edo governor said that already arrests had been made.

“About 14 suspects have been arrested already; we will pursue the case until its logical conclusion.

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“We are making arrangements to provide compensation to all the families affected by this incident,” he said.

Earlier, Yusuf, while praying for the souls of the victims, said that all hands were on the deck to ensure that justice prevailed.

“We are working closely with my counterpart, Governor Okpebholo, to ensure that all those arrested are prosecuted.

“We will also ensure full compensation for all the affected victims,” he said.

“I pledged cash and food items to the families of victims,” he said.

He also promised that compensation would be paid to the victims’ families, adding that the government would not relent in pursuing justice for the victims.

Source: NAN

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