THE call by a former Chief of Army Staff and Minister of the Interior, retired Lt-General Abdulrahman Danbazzau, for a comprehensive mop-up of arms and drugs from among the Fulani pastoralists calls for serious attention.

Danbazzau was one of the guests at the recent Pastoralist and Fulbe Security Conference organised by the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, MACBAN, and Northern Consensus Movement, NCM. His paper was titled: “Dilemma of the Fulbe Pastoralist”.

Apart from mopping up arms in the custody of the Fulani pastoralists which are used to commit heinous crimes like killings, kidnapping for ransom, attacks on farming communities and other terrorist activities, Danbazzau also wanted their access to arms and drug supplies blocked.

He called for the arrest and prosecution of offenders while efforts should also be made to grant them greater access to educational, health and capacity development opportunities. The only way that Danbazzau’s call can be implemented is for the Fulani pastoralists to embrace modern and peaceful methods of conducting their business. They must abandon nomadism and adopt a settled, lawful lifestyle.

That way, they can be properly profiled to separate the foreigners from the Nigerian citizens among them. It will also become easier to enlist the support of the law-abiding ones to help isolate the criminals and terrorists and subject them to the law.

The Fulani elite had created the problems that their grass-roots have now extended to the general population. While their peers among the other ethnic groups extended educational opportunities to their grass-roots, the Fulani elite kept the nomads in the forests to tend to their livestock. They exploited and abandoned them.

With a rising population combined with dwindling land resources, clashes between the herders and farmers led to the increased arming of the pastoralists by their elite.

While some of them attacked farming communities to dispossess them of their lands, others took to crimes of cattle rustling and kidnapping. President Muhammadu Buhari’s approach to solve the problem is obviously wrong-headed.

Apart from using the armed and security forces to condone the herders’ acts of terrorism, the president has been trying, through his Ruga, Grazing Routes, Cattle Colonies, Water Resources and other obnoxious policies, to forcefully settle Fulani pastoralists throughout the country. This has worsened the insecurity situation.

Danbazzau was until recently deeply involved at the highest security level of the country. As the Minister of the Interior, he had also embarked on arms mop-up in February 2019. Why did the insecurity worsen after that exercise? He and many Fulani leaders really have a lot of questions to answer as to the roles they are playing in rendering some Fulani pastoralists as the major security threat to Nigeria.

We must have a national dialogue to address Fulani herdsmen question once and for all.