The security agencies could do more to curb the herdsmen growing menace
Many students of Benue State University, Makurdi last Saturday poured into the streets to protest the killing by herdsmen of their colleague, a final year Geography student. It was the second protest within a week in the state as aggrieved youths of Mkovur community in Buruku Local Government Area had earlier blocked the Katsina/Ala-Gboko Road and held up as mirror of the herdsmen violence, the corpses of six persons allegedly slaughtered in their community. While the Mkovur community was still mourning, another set of gunmen invaded a farming community in Zaki Biam and killed 17 others, mostly women and children.
A distraught Governor Samuel Ortom, a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) admitted that the state “has been overwhelmed” while accusing the federal government of indifference. It is understandable. Benue State is indisputably the theatre of herdsmen’s bloodbath. In February 2016, Ortom was forced to arrange an emergency visit to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo to seek the federal government’s intervention in stopping the “escalation of violence” in Agatu Local Council of his state. That was after some herdsmen had killed about 300 people and sacked some of the mainly agrarian communities. “We have to do everything possible as a government to arrest this situation and bring the perpetrators to book,” Ortom told Osinbajo. But the cycle of violence has continued as other communities were soon to bear the brunt of the marauding herdsmen attacks in the long running conflict over grazing rights.
Unfortunately, this mindless killing is not restricted to Benue State. What is truly worrying is that despite the bad publicity dogging their activities, the nomadic cattle herders have continued to throw their violent weight around. Last week, the police command in Abia State had cause to raise an alarm that several of the herdsmen had infiltrated many communities in the state. Apart from killing men and raping women, some of the herdsmen were also engaged in the booming business of kidnapping. Indeed, so many prominent men and women, including traditional rulers, had fallen into their net and were only set free after payment of handsome ransom. Named the fourth deadliest “terrorist group” by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015, the herdsmen also indulge in destroying homes and property of farming communities whenever and wherever they strike.
Although President Muhammadu Buhari and other stakeholders often make the usual statements condemning these brazen acts of murder with a pledge to investigate, we believe that these violent crimes would not have attained this magnitude if the criminals did not have access to arms. The authorities, therefore, must curb this growing problem of proliferation of illicit arms. As we repeatedly said on this page, the starting point in resolving the problem is to determine the source of these arms and how they get into the hands of the herdsmen.
Our security agencies need to up their game and find answers to nagging questions with a view to permanently stopping illicit importation of arms into the country. They must find the perpetrators of this gun-running crime and bring them to justice. And there are compelling reasons why the authorities must act fast in the interest of our national peace and cohesion.
Following the inability of the federal government to rein-in these violent herdsmen, there is a growing perception that otherwise law abiding citizens may have to make their own security arrangements to secure their lives and property. The urge for citizens to arrange for their own defence, as Ortom implied when ordering the herdsmen out of his state last week, can only worsen the situation on the ground. Community arrangements for security against gunmen would require private accumulation of arms. In this bid to balance terror, our country runs the risk of becoming home to massive illicit arms with assured disastrous consequences.