INTRODUCTION
I debuted here last week with “Hard Facts.” Let me explain why. Facts are unimpeachable, inviolable, sacrosanct, sacred, immutable, rigid, permanent, inflexible, unyielding, unshakeable, indelible, ineradicable, unbending and fixed for all time. Facts are not soft, mushy, slushy, squashy or pulpy. They are, therefore, very hard, firm, solid, inflexible, impenetrable, stiff, resistant, unbreakable, rigid, stony, unyielding and flinty. This I intend to do in this column.
I will present the facts in their true nature, in discussing “the Nigerian Project” (the title of my other column at the back page of Sunday Telegraph, which I commenced and have maintained since October 12, 2014. I will not insult or abuse people. But, I will interrogate authorities, institutions and conduct and acts of persons occupying such institutions. I will raise critical issues. I will attempt my humble solution or panacea to them. Readers can react
To encourage plurality of ideas. But, in civil, temperate, interactive and decorous language
This column will not be politically partisan, for I belong to no political party in Nigeria. I will question conduct of political parties and their leaders, as regards their promises, delivery, governance, democracy, human rights and rule of law. The column seeks to contribute to national discourse towards mation building, through critical excursion in to our challenges and the way out. Welcome on board!
GENOCIDAL ACTIONS BY SUCCESSIVE NIGERIAN GOVTS
Live cases
ODI, Zaki Biam, Agatu, MASSOB, IPOB, OPC, Arewa youths, Ijaw youths, Ogoni, etc. The cases are galore. Communal agitations. Government -led massacres. A litany of violence, bloodletting and genocidal actions by successive government in Nigeria.
On November 20, 1999, the Nigerian military, on the directives of the then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ), carried out a massacre of the Odi community, a predominantly Ijaw rusty town. The people were merely agitating for indigenous rights to partake of oil resources buried in their ancestral grounds. The military said it acted in self-defence, or as a reprisal, as over 20 members of the Nigeria Police had been murdered by a gang of armed militias near Odi, two weeks earlier.
President Obansajo had given Governor Diepreye Alamieyeiseigh two weeks to fish out the cop killers. When this failed, 50 Army trucks of between 3000 and 5000 troops snaked through the fragile, muddy forests into the heart of Kolokuma/Opokuma LGA.
In the operation led by one Lt. Col. Agbabiaka, over 300 were reportedly killed in the most horrific African military operation, after General Sani Abacha’s troops had overrun Ogoni land.
The villagers cried genocide. The Army cried ambush by Odi village armed militias who used the civilian populace as a shield and artifice. Trained to kill and not to be outdone, the Army went on rampage, killing, piling, destroying buildings and committing arson of monstrous magnitude. It was said that only a bank, an Anglican Church and a health centre stood after the burning down of the entire town.
While the government, as expected, put the death toll at 43, including eight soldiers, Human Rights Watch recorded killing of “tens of unarmed civilians” and “several hundreds dead.” In February 2013, the Federal High Court (thank God, the judiciary still remains the last bastion of the common man, no matter the antics of those trying to pull it down and attain absolutism), awarded N37.6 billion compensation against the Federal Government and in favour of the helpless Odi people. The GEJ government paid N15 billion as full and final out-of-court settlement after a London Court had threatened to enforce the full judgment of Justice Lambo Akanbi, if the N37.6 billion-judgment debt was not paid by October 21, 2014.
The Zaki Biam pogrom
In the form of ethnic cleansing, Zaki Biam community in Benue State was attacked, with hundreds of civilians killed in cold blood. The pogrom was said to be the Army’s retaliation for the killing of 19 soldiers by suspected Tiv ethnic group. Their mutilated bodies were discovered in Zaki Biam. The soldiers were allegedly deployed to the troubled area on October 12, 2001, to restore law and order, following violent clashes between the Jukun (Taraba State) and Tiv (Benue State) ethnic groups.
On October 22, in an orgy of blood-thirsty extra-judicial killings, hundreds of soldiers from the 23rd Amoured Division of the Nigerian Army criminally destroyed homes, shops, public buildings and other property. Villagers fled into the forest and abandoned their homes. The Army rounded up poor villagers in Gbeji village, ostensibly for a “meeting,” sat them down, separated the men from the women and children, and then indiscriminately and sporadically opened fire on them, at very close range. Some victim’s bodies were gruesomely set ablaze, even as more soldiers invaded neighbourly villages of Ugba, Vasae, Anyiin Iorja and Sankera. These were located in the Logo and Zaki Biam LGAs of the state.
In all, over 200 people were said to have been massacred in cold blood, leading to the imposition of a dusk to dawn curfew. When students in the university at Makurdi intervened on October 24 and 25, further mayhem and violence again broke out. The dead, injured, burnt vehicles and tyres litred the streets. All these genocidal killings in Odi and Zaki Biam happened under OBJ, the puritanic “navigator” and “pathfinder” of the present government. Nigeria, we hail thee.
THE AGATU GENOCIDE: A COUNTRY UNDERGOING IMPLOSION
Remote causes of the crisis: The Agatu community version
The problem, according to the Agatu community, has always been about farmlands. In 1986, sequel to the destruction of farmlands by the Fulani cattle and the killing of a woman on her farm, they were driven away by the people of Agatu. Now, the Fulani, according to Oche Achega, want to come back and they think the way to go about it is to attack their people, kill or drive away the survivors and then occupy their lands.
On the immediate cause of the current crisis, the monarch said: “The present attacks started as a result of the problems the Fulani herdsmen had with Tiv people. There was a peace meeting to be held to settle the matter. Unfortunately, Tiv people ambushed the Fulani leaders on their way to Ocholoyan and the Fulani blamed Agatu people for the attacks.
Since that 2013, the Fulani people said they wouldn’t agree to a settlement and, in January 2015 alone, they have attacked us more than four times but each time they come, my people repel them and they have been fighting with mercenaries.”
He disclosed that although the Benue State government had organised several peace meetings in the past, the meetings had only been between Tiv and Fulani. They have never involved the Agatu people.
Alleged involvement of mercenaries
Achega said his concern heightened, following the discovery that the Fulani raiders were also hiring mercenaries from Mali and Chad to fight Agatu people. In the process of repelling the attackers, the Agatu vigilante, he stated, discovered that some of them were, indeed, not Fulani and had no idea of the terrain of the theatre of war.
No security coverage
The monarch lamented how the state and federal governments had abandoned his people to be slaughtered like beasts on their land. He said that it was only the initial attacks that attracted any form of response from the government, as a few policemen and soldiers were sent there, but that it was only after the attackers had carried out the killings and destruction of their properties worth billions of Naira.
Currently, there is hardly any visible security presence in the area. Numerous people on the coastal lines are no longer in their houses. The security agencies just occupy the communities for a short while and then leave with a promise to come back, but they never do because they know Agatu people would fight back. What kind of country is this? Where is Section 14 of the Constitution, which talks about the provision of security and welfare to the people being primary purpose of government.
Vigilante to the rescue
According to the chief, the only resemblance of security in Agatu are the local vigilantes, who are essentially young men who chose to die in the battle to repel Fulani attackers than stay in their parents’ homes and be shot dead or burnt. He regretted that the boys had no arms to match the attackers’ sophisticated weapons.
The Agatu people are not asking for much. Just a detachment of Mobile Police Force to the coastal lines, like Abogbe, Ocholanya and Ogbanchenyi that had been sacked. The people are in the bush and there is no more land for them to farm. To be sure, Okpanchenyi is the town that produces the bulk of the food that is consumed in Benue State and beyond. Agatu people are mostly farmers and major agricultural contributors to the nation. And now that they are supposed to be preparing for the rainy season, they cannot do so because of fear.
Out of the 10 council wards in Agatu Local Government Area, only one ward was not affected in the bloody attacks. This is extremely sad. This is calling on the federal and state governments and all security agencies to rise up to the occasion and halt further bloodletting, arson and misery of the Agatu people. The issue of Fulani cattle herdsmen as regards grazing purposes should be tackled once and for all. The clashes between them and indigenes of towns across Nigeria are becoming too incessant, too embarrassing and certainly making a mockery of our security network and desire to live peacefully and harmoniously together, as one nation.