By Emmanuel Ugwu
Fulani herdsmen are the freest mass murderers in the world today. They are the only band of active terrorists on this planet that are privileged with explicit immunity. Nigeria has all but officially legitimized their campaign of violent depopulation on Nigerian farmer communities. The government of the day dutifully rationalizes, downplays and whitewashes their butchery.
The scorched earth attacks of that prolific militia are a means to an end. Their desperate mission to plunder, rape and crater the Middle Belt and Southern parts of Nigeria with mass graves signposts their resolve to complete a bold, coherent program of ethnic cleansing in the shortest possible period of time. Their singular goal is to transform the lands they lust after into a large cemetery, a vast graveyard where only grass, cattle and alien cow herds thrive. Their objective is land grab; their strategy is genocide.
The killing spree of the herdsmen escalates by the day in a consequence-free Hobbesian estate where every new carnage gives them a second wind. Every bloodbath strengthens their hand. It raises their cruelty. It makes them more triumphalist. It aggravates their impunity.
Before our very eyes, the savagery of the herdsmen has evolved from an occasional tragedy to a normalized fact of life. Their bestiality is now the staple of news. And worst of all, the shock tactics of the murder maniacs is increasingly desensitizing the people and weakening the spasms of public outrage that trail every ugly slaughter. The killings are beginning to assume the semblance of the holiness of a ritual sacrifice.
That should change. All Nigerians who are disturbed by this recurring carnage must go beyond cheap chatter and galvanize themselves to break the vicious cycle. They must canalize their avowed concern into a kinetic protest force.
It’s time for Nigerians to rise up and starve the war chest of the herdsmen. Deny them patronage. Avoid all commercial transactions that serves to feed their stockpile of arms. Abstain from their ‘blood beef’ and ‘blood milk’.
A nationwide boycott would hurt the bottom line of the Fulani herdsmen and degrade their ability to kill on a large scale. It would be a dramatic game changer. This trump card will bring their industry of destruction to its knees. It will force the war mongers to choose between peace and bankruptcy.
The boycott would represent an act of solidarity with the endangered human species whose native land the Fulani herdsmen are working aggressively to annex. The targets of herdsmen attack are typically humble folks struggling to eke out a living by tilling that lands that nourished and sustained their forebears. They are vulnerable people who cannot match the firepower of their adversaries and are, thus, incapable of defending their household from the onslaught of the wicked.
On the other hand, they have to contend with a well-resourced and resolute death cult that disguises as a ragtag gang of transhumance bullies. The herdsmen are an ethnic supremacist army marching for new frontiers. The pattern of their operations bespeaks a Janjaweed order of sophistication. They are equipped to kill, conquer and occupy.
The boycott would be a practical gesture of identification with the endangered people and their threatened history. It would be an exercise in resisting a ghoulish force that seeks to wipe innocent people out of the face of the earth. It would mean a vote for the right of pregnant women not to be ripped open by barbarians in a murderous Caesarean section.
