Ile-Ife killings – The question the federal government must answer

What’s going on in Nigeria presently looks more like get-ready-for-genocide practices: testing the waters and compiling the reactions for an eventual showdown. How Nigeria has come to its redline in miry clay- ethnicity and religion- is a shock. I have sought for explanation for the marauding Fulani herdsmen and even more to the official silence garmenting their impunity and found none convincing as at yet. I have asked for reasons why the Yorubas- a trouble-avoiding people went loose with trouble. None yet.Is it a clandestine war, is it the long proposed conquest to the sea, is it cattle-trade by force, is it strive for ethnic domination, is it enough-is-enough or all of these and more without a name? The Yorubas are complaining that their guests, the Hausa-Fulani crossed the inter-ethnic peace-boundary by molesting their kit-and-kin; when they questioned this behaviour their guests resisted and attacked; then a mob action ensued and lives were lost. The complaint went further to say that in the arrests that followed, only Yorubas were arrested and paraded. Question is, is it true or false? The response of the Inspector General of Police is that crime has no ethnicity. True, but sounds veiled. I recall GOD asking Adam, ‘where are you- a simple question? Rather than say ‘amongst the trees’, he began his cover-narrative: …I heard your voice, I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself’ – all out of context and self-implicating. How did he know he was naked? The question again is,’ is it true that in the stated feud, only Yorubas were arrested and paraded? If true, the authorities in the discharge of their duty forgot the ethnic sensitivities of Nigeria.

Even without ethnicity, there is no way in a two-party feud, one is absolutely right and the other absolutely wrong. Then there was no feud or it is a master-servant play-out, andthe servant cannot accuse his master? If this is the picture, say. The other angle is that if one-sided arrests were made, what would the federal government tell the rest of Nigeria that it is doing when already, it is a suspect of bias or at least a confused sympathizer? The import of these is that people will soon begin to lose trust and once that happens, the very thing that binds can hardly hold together anymore. FG must therefore be careful. When people cried out that Buhari’s appointments were one-sided, it is against developments as worrying as this.

Almost all the service chiefs come from one side, then who would bark and where did national character go? When trust goes, sectional cleavages strengthen. Still more dangerous is the fact that the threat is common to all the threatened- Fulani herdsmen destroy their farms and rape their women from middle belt to Southwest down to South-south and Southeast. There is now a common grudge. What if these come together to question the need for the continued shared existence which is no more shared? What if they say they are tired of it all? What if they take steps to defend that mind-shift? How far can the federal government go, would herdsmen and their AK 47s stop that resolve? How would the federal government explain any action the service chiefs may take in the domain of the ethnics but against them when they are all from the side of the aggressors and are suspects. Won’t this lead to the ethnics calling on their kit-and-kinto disobey any command that would hurt their people and what’s the consequence for the security apparatus in the immediate and the nation by extension? I have lifted these what-ifs to remind us of where we are going and the consequence thereof.

Then some northern juggernauts came calling for compensations. Ha! When did this enter the lexicon of interethnic post-conflict in Nigeria? Is it ever the right thing to do and why now? Then Nigeria should go back to 1953, 1966, 1983,etc., and start paying. Now to President Buhari, these are no easy times. No one knows how well he is and we wish he is very well because these are no problems for anyone having health issues. The fire of ethnicity can consume even the robustly healthy. But he can pull few strings to sway things radically: make the office of the service chiefs have the much-preached national character, have a sit-in with the aggrieved parties in the presence of their opinion leaders and youth-wings, get drastic and decisive with these marauding herdsmen whose activities are nothing other than conflict-boosters, caution the ethnic pierce-horns: Arewa and Afenifere and in the wider scope, dust up the report of the National Conference to pick what Nigerians gathered to say, ‘this is good for us’.

 

Dr. Onyebuchi Onyegbule