President Buhari and violent herdsmen

The president says it’s not tribalism. His impotence against the herdsmen is baffling. He has figures to prove it. The herdsmen killed 756 people in 2 years during Jonathan’s era. That is astonishing. The herdsmen have been invading communities and killing since the ages. Buhari denies tribalism has shackled the arms of the law and tempered his customary allergy for social disorder. I believe him.
But a president who inherited such a massive security threat, as his figures evidence, should have had an urgent containment strategy. What has the president done to contain the herdsmen? If history and casualty figures discharge the president of tribalism, they convict him of dereliction of duty.
The Niger Delta once broke down into lawlessness. The leaders of that zone didn’t abdicate the special moral responsibility to sort it out. When Jonathan became president, we expected restiveness and violence perpetrated by his kin to abate or be squelched. Buhari is president. We do not expect Fulanis of any hue to constitute any serious security concern for the ruling government.
And if any herdsmen proved too nomadic to read the mood of the nation then Buhari was expected to attend to them with a special indignation. The President ought to understand that under his watch, the persistence of bloodletting by herdsmen, would be given reasonable negative ethnic interpretations. The Benue State APC thinks its an invitation to civil war.
If you listen to the Governor Ortom you will hear pain and frustration. If the governor sounds that helpless, then truly anarchy isn’t afar off. The cycle of doom seems unstoppable. Cattle invade farms and cows are touched. Herdsmen are riled. They arrange midnight reprisals. They massacre and eliminate whole villages. Their idea of deterrence is a human head for a dead cow. The government watches, then pays condolence visits with platitudes and relief materials and sues for calm.
Then they would hold reconciliatory meetings. Representatives of the murderers would attend with frowns of indignation. Sometimes they are placated with cows, bought by government, in the interest of national unity. Then the surviving farmers return charred houses. Bits and pieces of charred human flesh, entrails of pregnant women and babies, and broken hopes are raked into bags. And buried. Sometimes in mass graves. And the Federal Government when prodded would talk about a long history of clashes between farmers and herdsmen, and right of way, and national unity. Until, another massacre happens.
The governor has identified the murderous group. It is a faction of Miyetti Allah. Everyone knows them. The Army and the DSS know them. But the inspector General of police would wait for a directive from the president before playing to the gallery of relocating to Benue state. That was the script after the Agatu massacre.
It will be used again. The murderous herdsmen have now decapitated policemen deployed to contain them, in broad daylight. But we haven’t been told they have crossed any redlines. Because the governor met the President and came out to reject a certain proposal for colonies for herdsmen. The Army says it’s on a standby.