Don’t ever get fooled by the sophistry of power merchants who speak of one Nigeria; don’t get carried away by the sophism that Nigeria is one indissoluble republic guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens. In form and in context, the oneness of Nigeria as an indissoluble union is being challenged. The liberty which Independence from colonial rule conferred on the citizen has become a subject of debate. Some Nigerians are beginning to wonder, rightly too, if truly they are still part of the federal republic; and much more if the federal republic of Nigeria, a status the nation attained in 1963, is still what the founding fathers conceived it to be. It does appear from contemporary episodes that the labours of our heroes past have faded into vanity; amounting to zilch and signifying nothing.

Before our very eyes, the sanctity of Nigeria being a federal republic is being challenged by the flourishing of yet another republic: the Republic of Fulani Herdsmen. The Fulani are culturally and historically nomadic people. They are to be found in Nigeria and other African nations including contiguous nations like Cameroon, Niger, Republic of Benin. They are predominantly cattle herders; a vocation in which they have over the centuries acquired dexterity. It is to their credit that Nigerians are not starved of beef, a common type of red meat which is popular in the nation’s culinary ensemble. But cattle is not the only source of meat in the country. Poultry, goat, piggery and a wide range of wild animals of the avian and mammalian class have continued to satiate the meat passions of the people.

To complete the basket of protein supply to the Nigerian staple is also a strong contribution from the fishermen of the coastal states of Nigeria from whom flows a steady supply of fishes, shrimps, crab, lobsters and sundry crustaceans. Yet, human gastronomy, least of all that of Nigerians, does not start and end with protein either from meat or from crustaceans. There is also protein supplied from plants, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals from a wide gamut of vegetables, fruits, food crops among others. It is the combination of all of this that makes the average Nigerian dish a complete meal; sought after globally and in most cases highly priced.

The beauty of the Nigerian menu is that every part of the country contributes to the pot; to the staple. Every ethnic nationality has something to make the others salivate. There is always a chord that binds. Therefore, no ethnic group should in the course of producing its contribution to the national menu attempt to annihilate the other; or consume their produce in the most ravenous manner just to sustain its own production line. But this is what the Fulani herdsmen are doing: destroying the produce of others to sustain their own products. This is both unacceptable and despicable.

Now, they have gone beyond the border of destroying crops of their host communities or those of any community they traverse in the course of their nomadic vocation. They have added to this rapacious rampage of farmlands the fatal phenomena of killing, maiming and kidnapping and collecting ransom to fuel their bloody orgy. It beats the imagination that in a so-called ‘One Nigeria’, a group of people would be so emboldened to maim and kill and destroy their fellow humans unchallenged and uncensored. The list is growing but the people of Ubulu Uku in Delta State are still mourning the savagery visited on their monarch who was abducted, Gestapo style, and murdered in the most barbaric show of butchery by Fulani herdsmen who have in recent months delineated the entire state and mapped out the landscape to themselves like feudal lords superintending over serfs in medieval times. In some cases, the macabre showmanship of the herdsmen has left multitudes either dead or maimed. In January this year, 30 people in Adamawa State among them the Divisional Police Officer in charge of Vunokilang police station in Girei local government area fell to the barbarity of the Fulani herdsmen.

Their open show of vicious barbarism shows no respect for any human irrespective of status. In October last year, it was the turn of Chief Olu Falae, a statesman and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, to experience the bitter taste of their mortifying broth. The grand old man was abducted right in his own farm and was only released after ransom was paid on his behalf.

From Benue to Imo to Enugu, the Fulani herdsmen have become the deadliest single group after Boko Haram. Last November, the people of Irete community in Imo State were forced to cry out against the continuing rape of their women and destruction of crops by the herdsmen. And now, the pogrom in Agatu community of Benue State!

In some cases, the herdsmen allege cattle rustling as reason for their attack on host communities. This reason clearly flies in the face of logic. Even if persons from the host communities were suspected to have stolen their cows, that is not enough reason to kill, maim and destroy human lives. You cannot take a human life for the life of a cow. Never!

Some persons have advocated balance of terror; that is, host communities attacked by herdsmen should retaliate. I do not support this prescription. It will snowball into series of reprisal attacks and the consequences of such act of vengeance may be too dire for the nation. Another war looms!

A way out is to create rangelands in different parts of the country where the herdsmen can exercise their grazing rights as against the current practice of exercising such rights on pasturelands which are the farmlands of persons whose daily income and sustenance come from such lands. It will be the duty of cattle herders to cultivate these designated rangelands and they should ensure that their cattle are restricted to grazing in the rangelands. Any grazing outside the rangelands amounts to trespassing.

But wait a minute, who arms the Fulani herdsmen with sophisticated weapons such as AK-47 and Pump- Action machine guns in Nigeria where illegal possession of firearms is a grave offence? With all the premeditated killings they have executed with their weapons over the years, how come they have never been convicted? Why have agents of the state – police, DSS et al- continued to look away while the herdsmen continue to maim and kill?

Too many puzzles but the only feasible explanation is that the republic of Fulani herdsmen is thriving because the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a failed state. One of the symptoms of a failed state is the manifest breakdown of law and order and a blossoming of lawlessness, unchallenged. The chief duty of any government is the protection of the lives and property of the citizenry. On this, the Nigerian government has failed. And somebody has come to fill the vacuum: step forth the Fulani herdsman, bearing arms with imperial swagger; his hands bloodied and full of blood. He is the herald of doomsday; the sure evidence that the labours of our heroes past has dissolved to futility. The emergence of the republic of Fulani herdsmen is the incontrovertible proof that the Federal Republic of Nigeria as it was first conceived has lost its lustre, authority and sovereignty. It has capitulated to a lesser republic brimming with murderous fury. This is worse than corruption and portends more danger and more turbulence in the flight to nation hood.

First published in Sun newspaper of Sunday, March 20, 2016