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Mr. President sir, I am writing this morning with a very heart and two things are responsible for this. One, the incessant killings of my fellow Fulbe under your watch without anybody being punished, and two my diminishing respect and support for you as a person. The latest in the string of these unending killings by the state against the Fulbe herders was the Rukubi, Akwanaja massacre of defenceless, hapless pastoralists trying to eke a living a harsh economic and social environment occasioned by your policies. They were killed by drones operated by the Nigeria Airforce, which you are the Commander-in-Chief. Yet not a word of sympathy or condemnation from your ever boisterous media team, who are always there to offer condolences to a chicken owner whose chicken is run over by a drunken motorist in Lagos. Mr. President, I feel diminished by your leadership today.
The Rukubi, Akwanaja massacre was not the first time that pastoralists and their herds were bombed to smithereens, rather it is one among a series of orchestrated annihilation programme designed by some state actors against the Fulbe. The existential threats the Fulbe faced and is facing under your watch has no reference point even in the days when Bola Ige was attempting to set up the Fulbe for extinction by likening them to the Tutsis that were massacred in Rwanda in 1994. And you should know, Mr. President, that most of the aggression against the Fulbe is because of the believe that you are a Pullo, so the Fulbe are only victims of transferred aggression, to some extent.
Mr. President sir, if I recall very well, your Oath of Office demands of you to “protect lives and properties” of all Nigerians, irrespective of creed, tribe, or ideology. It didn’t say “… with the exception of the Fulbe”. Your reaction anytime that the Fulbes are killed or their livelihood is destroyed is mute indifference. Are we to infer that we are living in an Orwellian Animal Farm where some animals are more equal than others? I have seen how your government reacted to the killing of a female lawyer in Lagos in December 2022 by a policeman, when an arrest and prosecution have since commenced. I have read strong-worded condemnation from your spokespersons when the daughter of Fasoranti was murdered and the crime attributed to ‘fulani bandits’; you also came out strongly to condemn the reprehensible Owo Church massacre. Why is it difficult for you to condemn the killings perpetrated against the Fulbe? Or are they less human or less Nigerian?
Under your watch, Mr. President, the Fulbe are now fair game for the media to take poke shots at and your military to take bullet shots at. A law – akin to the laws found in Aparthied South African statutes – specifically targeted at a particular tribe was enacted by a federating unit also under your watch, which has been copied by other states because the pioneer state got away practically with murder and economic destruction. I expected your Attorney General to have challenged the law in the courts. It turned out my expectation was misplaced. Today no Fulani man is allowed to undertake any economic activity in Benue state because of this law.
Under your watch Mr. President, over 800 people and over 3000 cows were massacred on the Mambilla Plateau, yet not even a word of condemnation from your government even after the then GOC of the 3rd Mechanised Division, Major General Benjamin Ahanotu, called it the worst massacre he witnessed only comparable to the atrocities of Boko Haram. He called what he saw on the Mambilla Plateau a ‘genocide’. Under your watch, Mr. President, scores of Fulbe, comprising women and children were killed in Numan in Adamawa state. There was no reaction from you or your government. It was only after a reprisal attack by the Fulbe that the Vice President visited Adamawa state and even at that did not deem it fit to visit those at the IDP camps.
Mr. President sir, it was under your watch that attacks took place in Kajuru, in Kaduna state, countless times in Plateau state, and then the continued aerial bombardments by your Airforce on pastoralists in Taraba, Niger and Nassarawa states. All the sorties originated from the Makurdi Airforce Base. Mum is the word from your government and the Commander-in-Chief.
When the latest in the episodic killing of the Fulbe by your Airforce and its “quartermaster” Air Vice Marshall Ortom took place, you were wining and dining in Katsina without a care in the world. The drink you were toasting to your host may as well be the blood of those innocent herders trying to live a decent life by beating the odds and hurdles placed in their paths by an uncaring Federal government and a maniacal, blood thirsty Ortom. While the families of those murdered by your Airforce were wailing and mourning the loss of their dear and near ones, you were dining and enjoying the meat that was provided by their kin.
Mr. President sir, I feel very, very diminished by your presidency. I feel diminished in all possible ways – as a human being and as a Pullo. I have been profiled, denied economic activity and even my basic right to exist and your government looks the other way anytime I got bashed either mentally or physically. I have been physically brutalised and mentally bruised. I have become a poster boy for crimes and criminal activity nationwide. With you on the saddle, I feel less Nigerian. It has become a pattern under your watch that the live of a Pullo isn’t worth defending by the government anymore. To you and your government, the Fulbe are “expendable”.
Could it ever get worst for the Fulbe?
