THE story of Fulani clash and incursion on sedentary farming communities in Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau as well as Taraba states among others in Nigeria, has in no small measure assumed a dangerous level that calls for, not only urgent, but total action by all and sundry.
It is no gain saying that the attendant consequences of these violent clashes are better imagined than described in communities where they occur.
Records have it that in Benue state alone, over 50 communities in the past three years have been under siege of the Fulani nomads as they throng into the communities, ransack, maim, set properties worth millions of naira ablaze and kill unquantifiable number of lives. Women, children and aged persons are worst hit by these rascally actions.
Similarly, 40 of the Tiv communities resident in Nasarawa state are also being visited with the same holocaust of maiming, killing and destruction of farms.
It was at the heat of this crisis that the government of Benue and Nasarawa States on June 24, 2011, constituted a joint communal clashes committee to look into and ascertain the remote and immediate causes of the crisis with the aim of proffering lasting solutions. But as the situation portends now, it no longer warrants the release of any white paper of the said committee as it has been overtaken by events.
Explaining the situation to The Guardian, a royal father, Ter Nagi, Chief Daniel Abomtse expressed worry that the phenomenon has sent thousands of Tiv people to their early graves both in Benue and Nasarawa states and their ancestral homes occupied by the Alagos, Fulanis or their associates.
Chief Abomtse said: “By the foregoing analysis, it no longer gives a picture of mere Fulani herdsmen – sedentary farmers clash, but a case of consummate hatred of a particular tribe by others in order to wipe off the unwanted tribe called Tiv both in Nasarawa and to some extent deep inside the Benue Tiv community at the borders.”
The royal father called on the Federal government, through the National Assembly, to enacts national policies to curb incessant Fulani menace now that the nation is undergoing the constitution review.
While stressing that Nigeria needs to settle once and for all, the settler-indigene dichotomy so as to give Nigerian citizens the right to live anywhere in the country; the royal father also posited that all forms and politically incorrect discriminations should be sanctioned to promote inter-ethnic interactions, maintaining, too, that the Nigerian Constitution should be amended to protect the land tenure system from abuse where peasants are often dispossessed by the rich and powerful.
He urged President Goodluck Jonathan to evolve policies and programs that will dramatically reduce poverty and increase agricultural production which remains the mainstay of the majority rural dwellers; aside using the ECOWAS protocols to convene a special conference on the ways to help settle the Fulani in their states in West Africa.
He also blamed the heinous attitude being perpetrated on the people on the visiting or nomadic Fulanis, noting that before now, the Tiv and the resident Fulani relationship used to be cordial, as the two tribes had even intermarried.
Abomtse further called for massive sensitization of the visiting Fulanis to make them know the difference between pasture grasses and farm crops; urging that the visiting Fulanis should always be made to live under the authority of their host communities and under the supervision of local government authorities as well as the law enforcement agents with all the rules of engagement.
The monarch equally advised the Fulanis in Benue and Nasarawa States to re-establish their own conflict resolving rituals to foster peace from antiquity so that peace shall reign and the sinister agenda of occupation be abandoned for ever, just as he condemned the calls by some people for barricading grazing areas for the cross border Fulanis saying it will compound more of Fulani aggressions on the people.
Recently, the governments of Nasarawa and Benue States, at a joint meeting in Lafia, vowed to intensify security through increased logistics to operatives to bring down the menace.
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