El Rufai’s Curious Solution to Tackle Terrorists

Joseph Ushigiale

Whose responsibility is it to protect the lives and property of citizens of a country? Since 1960 when Nigeria became an independent country, the Commanders in Chief (CinCs) have always sworn to respect the provisions of the Constitution and protect the lives and property of every Nigerian. So far, past leaders had fulfilled that purpose of keeping Nigerians and their property safe and secured. The consistent wanton destruction of lives and property through banditry, kidnapping, and ethnic cleansing by the Fulani terrorists has been unprecedented in the history of this country. From  Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Kogi, Nasarawa, Sokoto, Kaduna, Zamfara, Katsina, Oyo, Ondo, Kebbi states it has been a cocktail of tears, sorrow, suffering, bloodletting, and cries by innocent victims who have been at the receiving end of the reign of terror unleashed on them since the President Muhammadu Buhari took office.

Buhari, a former military leader who, alongside his cohorts, overthrew a democratically elected President Shehu Shagari, won the 2015 election by popular vote. It would be his fourth attempt having lost in the first three attempts to seek the presidency. He won this time around and took office with fanfare and at the time Nigerians were genuinely looking for a messiah to rescue them from what was gradually becoming the glaring ineptitude of the then President Goodluck Jonathan.

To be fair, insurgency was in full swing under Jonathan when Buhari swept to power. Apart from his exploits in Borno where he previously mercilessly wiped out the dreaded Maitatsine sect, Buhari was considered a perfect fit with his military background to quickly end insurgency that had taken firm hold in the north east and environs. He also added filip to the groundswell of expectations when he roundly condemned Jonathan as a weakling for his failure to stop the abduction of the Chibok girls. He promised to deal decisively with the insurgents and wipe them off in three months of taking office. Nigerians beleived him then and gifted him a resounding electoral victory to get the job done.

Soon as Buhari was inaugurated, there emerged a previously faceless group which announced itself as Miyetti Allah also known as Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) as a power broking group in Nigeria. With no previous political pedigree except for hailing from the same tribe with Buhari, it became untouchable, brutal and violent. Under the MACBAN a new militia exclusively populated by fulani renegades arrived in Nigeria. No one knows for sure from where but sources point out Guinea, Chad, Niger, Mali, and around the Sahel region in West Africa.

These renegagdes assumed a life of their own, took on the violence task of banditry, kidnapping and cattle rustling. Their activities compounded the government fight to end insurgency. Not only that, it now seems the government is covering the militia up by providing them weapons, vehicles, food etc. A government emissary and muslim cleric, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi sympathises with them and has asked for amnesty for them as he visits them regularly in their hide outs. So it is not as if government does not know where they are, government knows their location but backing them up with the military. 

It is for this reasons that seven years on, Buhari has neither wiped off the insurgents nor gotten a clue as to how to go about ending the menace. His cluelessness or his refusal to take action against them has embolden them to kidnap for ransom and kill without being challenged, attacked or made to face the full wrath of the law. It is not for nothing that today, innocent citizens are being confronted by a plethora of Boko Haram, ISWAP, Fulani Terrorists and Violent Fulani herdsmen fighting indigenous people in Plateau, Benue, Southern Kaduna and other places to dispossess them of their land in form of a jihad.

A chronicle of activities by these insurgents shows that in November 2018, Boko Haram seized about 50 loggers on their way to collect firewood in the forest, after killing 49 in two previous attacks.

All together, it is reported that Boko Haram and a splinter group known as ISWAP have killed 36,000 people in the north-east and forced roughly 2 million to flee since 2009, according to the United Nations.

Most recently, the group claimed responsibility for the kidnap of more than 300 schoolboys in Katsina in northern Nigeria. The boys were returned to their homes in mid-December.

In 2020, Boko Haram jihadists seized about 40 loggers and killed three others in north-east Nigeria near the border with Cameroon. Surprisingly, since Boko Haram launched its insurgency in the northeast region nine years ago, at least 2,295 teachers have been killed and over 1,400 schools have been destroyed. Most of these schools haven’t been able to reopen due to extensive damage or ongoing insecurity in the area, according to UNICEF.

The number of children kidnapped by the terrorist group includes 276 girls snatched from a boarding school in the northeast town of Chibok on the night of April 14, 2014.

Most recently, suspected Boko Haram fighters abducted 110 students from an girls’ boarding school in the northeast town of Dapchi in the middle of the night on Feb. 19. More than a month later, 104 of the schoolgirls were freed by their captors following “back-channel efforts and with the help of some friends of the country,” a ministry official was quoted to have hinted then.

Apart from Boko Haram and ISWAP exploits the combination of Fulani herdsmen and fulani terrorists are having a field day in Zamfara where the highly celebrated Kidnapping Kingpin Bello Turji openly admitted that their activities are being sponsored by the federal government. In a viral video still in circulation, he said without government sponsorship they could not buy AK47 guns and the sophisticated weapons and vehicles they are using for their nefarious activities and he challenged the government to openly deny that it is not sponsoring them.

The government has maintained silence yet refusing to go after them. With such a leeway, the terrorists have been consistently attacking Zamfara, Katsina and Sokoto states and inflicting and leaving heavy casualties in their wake while governemnt looks away as if nothing is happening. Even Katsina, the President’s home state is not spared. Yet, the President takes no action. What a big shame.

It is therefore surprising to hear Kaduna state governor, Nasir El Rufai, a staunch Buhari ally and cotraveller suggesting that mercenaries should be hired to tackle the terrorists. Really? What has changed? When the Jonathan administration hired Executive Outcome, a South African based security contractor to help in fighting the insurgents, it was the same people who protested the move arguing that all that was needed was to equip the military to get the job done. Now the time has come to work the talk yet all we get are excuses and more killings as government takes no action.

Is it not this same El Rufai that demonised Jonathan in the build up to 2015 and positioning Buhari as the messiah that had answers to all Nigeria’s problems? Without mincing words, El Rufai’s tenure remains a watershed in the history of that state in terms of the bloodletting, displacement of indigenous people from their ancestral land and actively and openly supporting the terrorists. He has demonstrated his partisanship aligning squarely with his murderous Fulani tribesmen.

To underscore how poor El Rufai and his alter ego Buhari have performed, an once peaceful Kaduna has become the official home of the terrorists. The Nigeria Defence Academy was attacked, some military officers killed and some others kidnapped under his very nose. He did nothing. In just one week, the Kaduna airport was over ran by the terrorists and one person lost his life. No one was apprehended. Within 24 hours, the Abuja to Kaduna bound train was attacked when the rail tracked was bombed. No fewer than eight persons lost their lives and an unspecified number was kidnapped. No arrest has been made, yet one hundred million ransom was reportedly paid to the insurgent to secure the release of the Managing Director of Bank of Agriculture, Alwan Hassan.

Shortly afterward, the insurgents took over the Abuja to Kaduna highway kidnapping and robbing commuters plying that route. Under El Rufai’s watch, people can no longer fly, travel by rail nor by road because an once peaceful Kaduna has become unsafe and dangerous. Now El Rufai is calling for mercenaries to intervene, is he not the same person who threaten to send foreigners who come to interfere in the affairs of the country back in body bags? So are mercenaries not foreigners? 

It has become clear that both Buhari and El Rufai are overwhelmed by the enormity of fighting these Fulani terrorists. If not, just like the Kaduna governor admitted: how come a government that knows the whereabouts of the terrorists, listens to their discussions and plans of how and where to attack is incapable of lifting a finger to respond to protect the citizenry?  

The questions begging for answers are: where is the money budgeted for and collected for arms purchase by the Buhari administration? Now that we have taken delivery of the Tucano fighter jets why are they not being deployed to the frontlines? Is this not the same alleged diversion of money meant for arms purchase under the Jonathan government that is responsible for why Dasuki is being prosecuted? The question is necessary given the recent request by the terrorists in a video demanding the federal government to meet the group’s demands. What agreements have Buhari entered with the terrorists, what are they demanding and how does Buhari want to meet these demands? Is it in national interest?

What’s the relationship between the present government that is pampering the terrorists and the terrorists? What is their ultimate agenda? Why shield terror sponsors from prosecution? Is the government afraid that its complicity would be exposed?

The Buhari government needs to come clean and tell Nigeria why it has decided to pamper the terrorists and supporting them with the military to kill innocent Nigerians. In Southern Kaduna, El Rufai boasted that his government had to pay the terrorists for peace to reign. He has since realised that, no matter the amount of payment made to them, a leopard would never change its skin. 

Three sets of criminal elements have emerged here: there is a group that undertakes robbing, kidnapping and raping for ransom; this highly violent group collects ransoms, buy arms and vehicle for reinforcement, 

The second is the group that kills to dispossess farmers of their farmlands and homestead and converting same to their personal use. The last is mostly made up of MACBAN members, they are being supported by the military who lead them to attack farmlands in the south. Any resistance from the farmers against cattle grazing in their farmlands is often greeted with high handed intervention by the military.

In Benue state, over six local government councils are constantly under attacks by these Fulani militia who are bent on disregarding the ban on open grazing imposed in some of these states. Its parent body MACBAN, riding on the back of Buhari as the life patron has lawlessly vowed not to reckon with the state law outlawing open grazing. Rather than challenging the law in court, the group has adopted guerrilla tactics with the tacit approval of the President. 

Worse of all, to show brazen sympathy for the insurgents, repentant insurgents are rehabilitated, given VIP treatment, absorbed into any arm of the armed forces and reintegrated into the system. How then do you secure your security architecture when there is no guarantee that these same repentant insurgents can’t breach it? Who can vouch for the sincerity of these repentant insurgents?

As it stands, both the President and El Rufai have to admit that with the level of carnage going on across the country and no foreseeable solution to stem this slide; before anarchy takes over Nigeria, the duo should honourably resign same way they took to the street to urge Jonathan to resign. They should know that they have abdicated their responsibilities, lack the capacity to govern and have taken a responsibility that they can’t keep up with. They have completely failed the same people they took the oath of office to protect.