OPINION - Okowa: A voice in the wilderness

The chief promoter of tyranny in any society is the conspiracy of silence among good men. Evil thrives when men of goodwill and virtue conspire to stand and stare rather than rebuke the merchants of evil. Today in Nigeria, there is looming largeness of criminal herdsmen. They abound everywhere. And men of high office have gone silent in mortifying acquiescence, save for Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, a medical doctor and governor of Delta State and a few others.

Governor Okowa, left, with Big. Gen. Jallo and CP Inuwa at the presentation
of 35 vans to security agencies by the governor at Government House, Asaba.

Okowa and these few men represent a tiny voice in the wilderness. One of such voices is Professor Babagana Zulum, the governor of Borno State. Unlike Okowa, Zulum’s voice was raised against the garrison of Boko Haram insurgents and concomitant extortion of the Boko Haram victims by security agents deployed to Borno State to fight the insurgents.

Last week in Asaba, Okowa raised his voice against the evil activities of criminal herders. Okowa is not your archetypal loquacious politician. He’s urbane, frugal with words and very articulate in thought. He’s not given to verbal flippancy or bombast. He’s immune to bandwagon syndrome. He would rather walk alone than move with the boisterous tide of vain men. Detailed. Calculative. Thorough. Those are attributes that define the governor of Delta State. Men of such pristine virtue do not whine. They are not given to mumbled grumble. They speak straight. They rebuke the waves of criminality in measured and firm tones. Okowa did just that when he challenged the federal government to make a definitive and categorical pronouncement on the terrifying insecurity being perpetrated by a category of herdsmen.

He tagged this variant of herdsmen criminals: “Anybody who carries arms in the name of herdsmen is a criminal, as they are not licensed to carry arms.”

In the past, herdsmen were never known to be dangerous vectors of death and pain. They were harmless men bearing sticks and gourds (for water). They were friendly men, welcomed in different communities by equally friendly natives. These days, however, there is a different variant of herdsmen. They bear arms, not sticks. They shoot, maim and kill. They are belligerent, unfriendly and stone-cold mean. It is this kind that has taken over hinterlands in Delta State. They have infiltrated communities, from the creeks to the upland. And they kill with heartless vigour. They plunder farmlands with their cattle and gun down the slightest resistance from the farm owner.

They have become feudal lords in other people’s land. When they are not plundering people’s farmlands, they are kidnapping for cash. And they have made huge hauls in Delta, stealing and extorting from the natives at gunpoint. These are not the herders of yore. These are neo-criminals, cold-blooded killers garbed in the toga of herdsmen. These are the ones that got Okowa and indeed all well-meaning Deltans and Nigerians worrying. And Okowa is not keeping quiet. No leader worthy of his badge should keep mum in the face of such hell-brewed danger.

While presenting 35 new Hilux vans to security agencies in the state, a concerned Okowa was categorical in calling out the federal government. He wants President Muhammadu Buhari’s central government which controls the nation’s security to give a policy direction on the growing and disturbing insecurity. He wants the central government to speak out on the insecurity to douse tension in the land.

“As it concerns herdsmen menace, the Federal Government need to do a lot. We need strong statements on what should be done for the security agencies to better do their work. If you are going into any particular place, it is only fair that you don’t walk into a community and seize the place. That is not right and for anybody who carries arms in the name of a herdsman, it is obviously wrong. They are not licensed to carry arms, not to talk about AK-47 assault rifles and anyone seen carrying arms is a criminal.

“Beyond those that carry arms, you don’t walk into a farm and begin to graze on the farmland; that is not the way it should be. So, there are a whole lot of issues and we need strong voice from the federal authorities, which will assist security agencies to tackle security challenges in the country.”

These are not the words of a happy man. They are the words of a concerned father, an empathetic leader. Okowa’s Delta, like most states, has fallen victim of the hostile hostage of killer-herders. From his own Senatorial district of Delta North through Delta Central to the fringes of Delta South, the armed herders have demonstrated a devious orgy for violence, for human blood. They have killed many including monarchs, abducted clerics, demanded and received ransoms, pillaged farms with primitive impunity and desecrated ancestral landmarks.

Strangely, the governors of the South-south, save Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, have carried on as if all is well. All is not well. The blood of my Obi, Obi of Ubulu-Uku, Edward Akaeze Ofulue 11, is till crying for vengeance. He was abducted and brutally murdered in January 2016. Such savagery and sacrilege. So is the blood of Chief Chikwe Ojinji, an Ubulu-Uku elder murdered in his farm by criminal herders. The list is long. Somebody must speak out. To keep quiet is not only cowardly, it’s unpatriotic. In moments like this, it’s unpatriotic to stay silent. The most responsible and patriotic act is to speak truth to power.

Okowa has chosen to tread the path of valour, the path of patriotism. He has raised his voice in the wilderness of fear, in the swampy creeks of the Niger Delta, in the violated farmlands of the uplands. Other governors should join to amplify this voice. Democracy guarantees liberty and rights. But such rights and liberties should be exercised within the limits of the rule of law, fairness, equity and justice. The herdsman wherever he’s from is not and cannot be an enemy of the people for as long as he operates within the confines of the law. But such herder instantly becomes an enemy when he comes with arms and deadly weapons. He becomes an abhorrent criminal. It’s this type that Okowa is saying “away with him.” It’s this type that he wants the federal government to come hard on. President Buhari as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces should rally his troop to rout these killer herders out of the country.

A criminal band of killer herders has encircled the South-south. These are not the herdsmen we used to know. Those were friendly. They were welcomed with open arms into communities, offered local food. They carefully avoided our farms but herded their cattle to graze along the roads or in open fields in a manner that hurt no one. We never suffered loss. They bore no gun or any dangerous weapon. They were in us and we were with them. But things have changed. The modern herdsman is a merchant of death, a vector of pain and a vendor of evil. It’s this murderous variant that Okowa wants the federal government to tame. He has empowered security agencies in his state but he cannot give them orders. Let the Commander-in chief arise and do his job. That’s Okowa’s message.

·        Source: https://www.sunnewsonline.com/okowa-a-voice-in-the-wilderness/