The senseless killings in Southern Kaduna: Necessity for international engagement

Nigeria continues to hover daily on the edges of precipice as one group of insurgents after another continue to challenge its legitimacy and above all its monopoly over the legitimate use of violence within its jurisdiction. If we accept Max Weber’s definition of the state, as political scientists have done, the successful claim to absolute monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory is the key feature and distinguishing characteristic of a state. In that case, Nigeria’s claim to statehood is tenuous, except in the juridical sense where the international community continue to afford it legitimacy regardless of its ability to project its powers within its territorial boundary.

Over the past year and a half, precisely since the coming to power of President Mohammadu Buhari, Fulani cattle rearers have virtually replaced the dreaded Boko Haram as the new terrorists on the bloc. They have literarily gone amok, killing and destroying communities all over the country. From Benue to Plateau, Taraba, Enugu, Delta, and Ekiti, the story has remained the same. Fulani gunmen invade communities at the thick of the night or when the men have gone to farms in the mornings, killing defenceless and innocent women, children, the old and infirm, looting and burning the communities for fun.

Shockingly, the reaction of the government to these killings have followed one trend: deafening silence at first and only half-hearted response that fails to stop the killings and refusal or inability to apprehend the killers and bring them to justice.

Since December 2016, the Fulani killers have shifted base to Southern Kaduna, turning it into a killing field. Giving statistics of the destruction wrought in the area recently, the Catholic Doicese of Kafanchan disclosed that a total of 808 people were killed in 53 villages across the four local governments areas in the state while farm produce estimated at N5.5 billion were destroyed by the invading forces. Going further the statement disclosed that a total of 1, 422 houses and 16 churches were burnt during the attacks.

The Kaduna state governor, Nasir el’Rufai has gone to town purportedly with measures the government has taken, including the declaration of a state of emergency in the four local governments affected, to stop the killings. However, even with the presence of security agencies, on Christmas eve of 2016, the Fulani herdsmen launched deadly attacks on the areas killing, burning and looting with little or no hindrance or challenge from security agencies. This had led many to point accusing fingers on the governor as one of the persons fuelling the killings.

But to add salt to injury, the President’s spokesman, Femi Adesina curtly berated those expecting the president to speak on the issue. He justified the president’s silence on the killings thus: “you don’t have to hear from the president on that matter. When it pays us, we talk of true federalism; yet you want the president and presidency to talk about everything.”

This is an outrageous and insensitive statement. How does one describe a president who comments on every terror attack in the world and send condolences for even a loss of a single live in those attacks but keeps mum when thousands of his own citizens are killed in terrorists attacks?

The last time out, it took severe criticisms from all and sundry and the growing perception that the President was obviously protecting and encouraging his Fulani kinsmen for the President to belatedly order security agencies to clamp down on the rampaging herdsmen. He’s now back to that same tactics. This is proving those who claim the president is, by nature, clannish and an ethnic champion true. This reaction from the presidency is shocking and totally unacceptable.

It is therefore clear that the present government cannot or will not intervene forcefully to end the genocide against some selected groups by the terrorists. We therefore feel there is a need for international involvement to protect the hapless people the government has failed or refused to protect. The International Criminal Courts must also necessarily get involve to help bring perpetrators and or collaborators to book.

These conflicts and problems daily show the critical importance and role the ICC plays especially in Africa where state actors or state-supported actors are the perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Without the ICC, victims of such crimes have no hope, no matter how remote, of getting justice.