Uromi Massacre: Time to act, by Abu Shekara
The sight is familiar but as to the horror, it always feels like the first time; the lifeless bodies of Hausa hunters from Kano State laid on the ground, one of them, still being clubbed to a pulp, his limp body dragged onto the heap of his comrade’s corpses; another, dead or dying man, wheeled in a barrow and deposited on the heap and yet another pulled out from a manhole, where he had taken refuge, as cudgels mercilessly rained on him, while his comatose body was being ferried to the mound of corpses.
The victims seemed all dead, until old tyres were placed atop them, sprinkled with petrol and set ablaze and the hideous screams one of them could be heard. One of his tormentors adjusted a burning tyre around his writhing body, as the crowd cheered in approval. Soon, black smoke was rising skyhigh from burning robber and human flesh, as the strangers burn, one of them, wailing to his death.
This horrific incident occurred in the town of Uromi in the Southern state of Edo in Nigeria. The victims were most probably travelling back home to mark the Eid-el-ftr with their families, taking a break from what must have been their occupation for a very long time. They must have travelled this road in the same type of commercial vehicle several times before and the fact that they bore their den guns did not occur to them for, their local, primitive weapons should be a familiar mark of the hunter’s identity.
For the vigilantes of Uromi however, the identity of 27 hunters passing through their domain could not be so easily ascertained. The wayfarers were held for brief interrogation and trial and found guilty of being a band of terrorists by a jury of hastily gathered mob of town’s people, who promptly passed the sentence of death. Some of the condemned did manage to escape but more than half of them were unlucky to have a taste of the kind of justice in Uromi community in Edo State.
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All over Southern Nigeria, Southwest, Southeast and South-South, this scenario is not new. Any group of Northerners walking the street of a strange community, herding cattle or passing through a village in a commercial bus are deemed to constitute a security threat.
To patrolling outfits like Sunday Igoho’s Amotekun and Southeast Defence Force, which are jointly established by state governments and community based vigilante groups, any stray Hausa-Fulani is a probable armed bandit, who is guilty until proved guilty of being one.
The stereotype is enforced by a narrative that has gained subscription not only amongst the Southern masses, but also by a number of their political and religious elite.
Hausa-Fulani, the account goes, are onto their historical expansionist agenda of annexing territory southwards for the glory of their still existing caliphate. Thus as far as communities like Uromi know, the hunters were not an isolated group but part of a wider, coordinated offensive on their lives and their land.
Back in the North, the situation has made matters worse. With banditry/insurgency ravaging all parts of the region, other geopolitical zones regard the North and its people as a scourge they must keep at bay. As a result, southbound grains and livestock trucks are ambushed and vandalised. Not even branded trailers of renown corporate organisations are spared. And in most cases, the apprehensions occur in the mob style of the Uromi incident.
Should the North and its people suffer the double tragedy of being stigmatised for the calamity they are victim of? Back in the days, when Southern Nigeria was the epicenter of armed robbery and other violent crimes, no indigene of a Southern state was branded and treated as an armed robber in any part of Northern Nigeria. In the ’70s and ’80s, commercial vehicles bound for Lagos, Enugu or Port Harcourt preferred to cover the Northern part of their route at night and begin the Southern lap of their journey in the day time.
Southern elements, who push the narrative that Hausa-Farmers, herders and hunters, who traverse the south are agents of a territorial expansion agenda, forget that the millions of traders from their part of the country, who have invaded and taken over the markets of Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto and Abuja have never been suspected of any other motive than merely carrying out their legitimate business.
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Traders from the Southeast have spilled over Northwards into Niger Republic, where the Igbo Traders Association boasts of hundreds of members in Niamey alone.
Southern universities are still the bastion of cultism, with some prominent personalities in the South being self-confessed members of such fraternities when they were in school. Still, millions of students from that part of Nigeria have, since the creation of this nation, been in higher institutions of learning in the North, suffering no suspicion, apprehension or stigma on that account.
Southern elements, who promote the perspective of stigmatising people from the other part of the country by the social challenges they are going through lose the fact that no section of Nigeria is an island and their own kinsmen also traverse other places and climes in similar pursuits to those of visitors to their land.
And this situation will prevail, even if the country is restructured in such a way that each part subsists on its own. If however, this attitude persists up till that time, it will lead to diplomatic issues between neighbours that could escalate to levels that are better imagined that witnessed.
In the meantime, Northern Nigeria, particularly the states, whose indigenes are constantly singled out for this terror cannot fold its arms and look the other way. If the political leaders of the South are compelled by security concerns to sanction the groups that carry out these dastardly acts, the political leadership of the North must take equally drastic steps out of the necessity of safeguarding the lives of their own people. And since, it would not be feasible to act reciprocally, Northern states should at least institute ways of discouraging their indigenes from straying into dangerous territories, even if they resist.
There is absolutely no logic, even for king and country, that a people should expose themselves to fatal dangers, in the search of prosperity or in an effort to provide goods and services to mistrustful and hostile environments. Governments of Northern states are therefore, duty-bound and justified to even by compulsion, save their people from themselves.
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