Benue massacre: Tepid response, unguarded utterances, warts and all

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1924
*President Buhari, Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom

Ime Akpan

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists carried out four coordinated suicide bomb attacks on World Trade Centre (WTC) which killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage.

Visiting the WTC on September 14, 2001 three days after the deadly suicide attack, the United States president, George Bush, armed with a megaphone declared: “I want you all to know that America today, America today is on bended knee, in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn. The nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

The sight of Bush holding a megaphone and addressing the rescue workers, the by-standers, the wailing crowd and the entire American people gave the people hope, confidence and assurance. With that singular action, Bush touched the raw nerves of the Americans, endeared himself to them and ignited patriotic passions in their hearts, kick-starting an outpouring of emotion and a frenzy baying from the crowd. Something akin to when Mark Antony stirred up the anger of Roman citizens when he addressed them in the wake of the assassination of Julius Caesar by a bunch of conspirators.

Juxtaposing the 9/11 attacks and the empathy shown by the American president, juxtaposing how Mark Antony handled the death of Julius Caesar with the unfortunate casual manner President Muhammadu Buhari, his media aides, some security chiefs and some All Progressives Congress (APC) governors handled the January 1-2, 2018 massacre of 73 people in Benue State by murderous herdsmen, one can safely conclude that the government’s response to the Fulani herdsmen terrorists was not only tepid but also farcical.

Apart from a belated order to the inspector general of police, Ibrahim Idris to relocate to Benue State and lock the stable after the horse had caused irreparable damage and bolted, government functionaries, according to the Catholic Archbishop Emeritus of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, “find a hobby in insulting Nigerians with dissenting voices, while preparations and propaganda for re-election have already begun.” Here are a few of such statements by some of the president’s close allies as well as some apologists while tears of the bereaved families in Benue State were emptying into the Benue River.

Munsur Dan-Ali—justifies herdsmen resort to killing because grazing routes are blocked

At the time the tragedy of the Benue people assumed a catastrophic dimension, the minister of defence, Munsur Dan-Ali, in an interview with State House correspondents in Abuja identified the blockage of cattle routes across the country as the remote cause of the killings by herdsmen and implementation of anti-open grazing law in some states as the immediate cause of the killings.

“Whatever crisis that happens at any time, there are remote and immediate causes.  Look at this issue (killings in Benue and Taraba), what is the remote cause of the farmers’ crisis? Since the nation’s independence, we know there used to be a route whereby the cattle rearers take because they are all over the nation. If you go to Bayelsa or Ogun, you will see them,” he said.

*Dan-Ali

And in a subtle endorsement of the killings, he asked rhetorically: “If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen?  These people are Nigerians. It is just like one going to block the shoreline; does that make sense to you? These are the remote causes of the crisis. But the immediate cause is the grazing law.”

El-Rufai—chooses the time of the Benue crisis to campaign for Buhari’s 2019

In what Okogie described as “sad symptom of insensitivity and callousness” a day after the 73 victims of the herdsmen attack were buried, the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el Rufai led a delegation of six other northern state governors- Abubakar Bello (Niger); Ibrahim Gaidam (Yobe); Yahaya Bello (Kogi); Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano); Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna); Jibrilla Bindow (Adamawa) and Simon Lalong (Plateau) to endorse the president for a second term.

*El-Rufai

“We are politicians and those of us you see here want the president to contest the 2019 election. We have no apologies for that.

“We believe in Mr. President, we want him to continue running the country in the right direction. People can speculate about 2019, we have no apologies. Whether they are right or wrong is beside the point.

“Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but as governors, and most of us here with the exception of Yobe Governor, are first time governors. We are interested in continuity and stability and we want the President to continue with that.”

Femi Adesina—–theorises the killings, drawing comparison between what obtained during two regimes

The special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina trivalised and theorised the carnage in Benue by doing a comparative analysis between the killings by Fulani herdsmen during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari’s.

*Adesina

Findings from his research proved that Femi Adesina that there were more killings under two years during the former’s leadership. He said herdsmen killed over 756 in two years under President Jonathan stressing that killings didn’t start under Buhari.

“Something that is disturbing that I have heard about it is linking those developments to the fact that a Fulani man is President and so, he is brooking such kind of evil acts.

“I think that is very unkind. And I will try to back my position with statistics.

“In 2013, particularly, there were nine cases of herdsmen invading communities in Benue State alone and more than 190 people were killed.

“In 2014, there were about 16 of such tragic developments with more than 231 people killed. And then there was a change of government in May 2015.

“But between January and May 2015, there were six attacks which left about 335 people dead,” said Adesina in a video he posted on his Facebook page.

Garba Shehu…attributes Buhari’s absence in Benue to ‘carnivalisation’ of burial of victims of herdsmen attack

While many Nigerians were wondering why the President did not deem it necessary to visit Benue State since the carnage, the senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, Mr. Garba Shehu said the burial of the victims was carried out in a carnival manner, something which according to him is not a sight for the president’s sore eye.

“The conflict has been there since the existence of the country. The difference here is that this is the first time someone has openly put coffins on display in articulated vehicles, accompanied by weeping women and children and conducted the funeral at the IBB Square, Makurdi.  The president is opposed to the drama around the loss of precious human lives.

*Shehu

“The most important thing is to act and not play politics with the unfortunate and despicable incidents. If he wanted to play politics, the President would have caught a plane and gone there. We are dealing with security issues that require tact, strategy and decisiveness.”

Ibrahim Idris—calls the killings communal crisis

The killing of 73 people, including children, the aged and physically-challenged, setting houses and farmlands ablaze is immoral, even in the most moral communal clashes, but the inspector-general of police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, made the Benue people deeply incensed when he described the bloodbath as a product of communal crisis.

*Idris

Speaking in an interaction with newsmen after a closed-door meeting with Buhari, the Niger State-born police chief who reacted to the accusation that the Police Force was being reactionary instead of being proactive in stopping the killings said: “Let’s use the example of Benue. You know most of these states where you have several languages, you know it is an issue of communal misunderstanding. I think what we should be praying for is for Nigerians to learn to live in peace with each other; I think it is very important.

“Obviously, it is communal crisis; herdsmen are part of the community. They are Nigerians and are part of the community.”

Prof. Muhammad….Benue State belongs to the Fulani by conquest, no one can expel the Fulani from Benue.

Without making any reference to any authority, Prof. Umar Labdo Muhammad of the Faculty of Humanities, Northwest University, Kano took to his facebook page to claim that half of Benue State is “part and parcel of Sokoto Caliphate” as such nobody has the right to expel Fulani from the state.

“Benue State belongs to the Fulani people by right of conquest. This is because half of the state is part of the Bauchi Emirate and the other half is part of the Adamawa Emirate. Benue is therefore part and parcel of the Sokoto Caliphate. So no one has the right to expel the Fulani from Benue under any guise.

*Muhammad

“Second to the Arabs, perhaps the Fulani are the most benevolent and merciful conquerors in history. If they had applied the Nazi final solution to the natives, or if they had treated them the same way the European settlers treated Red Indians in North America or the Aborigines in Australia, the story would have been different toady.”

 

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