This
is, undoubtedly, a difficult time for Afenifere leader, Baba Reuben
Fasoranti. He has suffered a grievous loss of his daughter, Funke
Olakunrin, in untoward circumstances. The loss of one’s child is a
painful and traumatic experience. My prayer for him and his family is to
find strength at this trying time.
Now, the death of Mrs
Olakunrin is bad enough; the politicisation of the grief is grossly
unfair to the family of the deceased. We have always known that some of
our leaders have bad manners, but this incident has further exposed them
as lacking the ethic of charity. When the news of the death was first
announced, the President’s media aide, Femi Adesina, hastily jumped on
Twitter to say her killers were “those described as armed robbers by
Ondo State Police Command.” Adesina cared little about the deceased; his
obsession about roughening up the narrative was to preempt people’s
angst that would be directed at his paymasters. If he cared about the
poor woman and he respected the Fasoranti family, he would have
hesitated and not tried to stuff words in the mouth of the police. The
bereaved family not only have to contend with their pain, they also have
to deal with the irritation of their daughter’s name being evoked each
time we bring up the petty politics of shameless politicians who are
using the sad incident to burnish their credentials as bona fide
national leaders.
One of these Job’s comforters is the All
Progressives Congress leader and former governor of Lagos State, Bola
Tinubu, who answered some journalists’ questions during his visit to the
Fasoranti family. First, he downplayed the circumstances of Olakunrin’s
death by suggesting that she could have died in a road accident if it
was duly fated. This line of reasoning is about one of the most
uncharitable things one can say to the hearing of a bereaved family and,
frankly, unbecoming of someone who wears the label of an elder. Such
misspeaks bolster my conviction that the withdrawal of the permanent
pass that some folk have awarded themselves as Yoruba leaders is long
overdue for withdrawal. However manner Olakunrin might have died, the
fact remains that she was killed and allegedly by herdsmen. To even
overlook the circumstances of her death, sidestep the tense reactions by
the exasperated populace, and begin to meander logic through bush paths
is moral cowardice.
For a while now, Nigeria has been in a
difficult situation because of the activities of killer herdsmen. Mind
you, these herdsmen have been labelled as the fourth deadliest terrorist
group in the world by the Global Terrorism Index. They have carried out
massacres in rural and agrarian communities, and have been emboldened
enough by the slackness of state security forces to move into urban
settings. Tinubu only needs to go to rural areas in southwestern
Nigeria, and his ears will be filled with stories of assault,
kidnapping, and vicious murder. People are no longer at ease. They have
lost their lives and entire investments in farming to the herdsmen
menace. Those that have survived deadly encounters live in fear of the
herdsmen. The fact that death is cheap in Nigeria does not mean we
should refuse to label an issue for what it is. There is a context to
the suspicion that Olakunrin might have been killed by herdsmen; why try
to obfuscate matters by pointing out other ways she could have died?
Why not just tell the bereaved you are sorry and go home?
The
herdsmen nuisance got to the point that Adesina told Benue people to
yield their land to their killers or continue to lose their lives. How
can anyone look at all of these stories – including the “your land or
your life” propositions to the poor hapless and undefended Nigerians –
and merely shrug and say death could have come by a road accident
anyway? We all know death is inevitable, but nobody throws their life
outside the window for the fun of it. Otherwise, why does Tinubu himself
travel with an armed escort and in a bulletproof vehicle too? Why can
he not test his fate by stripping himself of the paraphernalia of
defence and let’s see what happens?
While responding to the
press, Tinbu tried to deflect, engaged in a rhetorical strategy called
‘whataboutism’ for no other discernable reason than not wanting to
address the hippopotamus on his laps. The question at hand was the issue
of insecurity – the kidnappings and killings by herdsmen – but somehow,
he managed to drag in another issue entirely when he alluded to the
alleged kidnapper, Evans, who was arrested a while ago. What has Evans’
kidnapping career got to do with herdsmen who did not even start their
crimes with kidnapping but massacres and displacement of poor villagers
whose farms they raided? Why stop at Evans when he could equally have
raised other issues such as Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo’s pending lawsuit
and even climate change? He even threatened to give us a history of
kidnapping to show us that what we are presently dealing with is an
imitation of the criminal proclivity of southerners.
All of
the above bring me to the point that baffled me most and which
summarises all of the rhetorical acrobatics he did at the Fasoranti’s
house: the needless defence of the Fulani by Tinubu. By now, everyone
would have noticed that the most strident defence of the Fulani over the
herdsmen issue has come from southerners, particularly the Yoruba. On
the question of whether the Fulani deserve the stereotype of
cold-blooded killers or not, the Yoruba people have wept louder than the
bereaved. The Fulani themselves are an ethnic group with enough power
to take over the media in their own defence, but they do not do so.
Today, the Fulani are resented, and not just because of the herdsmen
issue but also because of the clannishness and tribalism of President
Muhammadu Buhari who has more or less driven collective benefits in the
direction of a selected class. Why have they not refuted the narrative
about them, considering that they have the necessary clout to challenge
the demonising of their ethnic identity? They can use the airwaves and
other media forms to vehemently denounce the herdsmen who attack
undefended populations. They can rebuke Miyetti Allah group over their
inflammatory statements, and also condemn the actions of reprobate
groups such as the Coalition of Northern Groups who gave governors a
30-day ultimatum to enforce RUGA and students of Usman Dan Fodio
University who insisted that RUGA must be established in all the 36
states of Nigeria.
They are so many crisis-management strategies
the Fulani ethnic group can deploy to manage their image being battered
all over Nigeria because of the spate of herdsmen attacks. If the Fulani
themselves are not engaged in activities to refurbish their image, it
is because they are too self-secure in their political power and
privileges to be bothered about the long-term implications of ethnic
stigmatisation. They probably also do not concern themselves so much
with pushing back against stereotypes because their lackeys in the South
run those errands on their behalf.
Tinubu, in rounding off
the interview, made a rather curious statement cum question, “I don’t
want to be political, but I will ask, where are the cows?” If by that he
means that the crime of murder could not have been committed by
herdsmen because there were no cows at the crime scene, it means he has
reached the end of reasoning. I do not want to be political either, but
the question of where the cows are has already been answered by none
other than Tinubu himself. The cows are everywhere. If some people look
into their mirror, they will find those cows staring back at them in all
their bovine glory.
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