Empire States Blog

Herdsmen: When reason goes on break

We are again at crossroads as a nation with the farmers/herders clashes being the latest test facing us as a people. We are daily confronted with gory pictures coming from Benue, Nassarawa, Plateau most recently Enugu state while other states have reported incidences. Given our diverse identities, reactions have been polarised along ethnic and religious lines and several of the interventions border on the extreme with the like of Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose threatening that the water sources in the state would be poisoned to deal with the herdsmen. Online, people have been coming up with contents that could only serve to aggravate an already bad situation. 

One report spoke of how women in a particular community sprinkled chilli pepper on their farms to deter cattle from destroying their crops leading to the death of some of the herds that ventured into the farms. Some blogs have even gone to the extreme of instigating reprisals; some persons of northern origin have relocated from a few southern towns and cities over this. 

The extreme ones among these interventions are condemnable with the only excuse for them being that those behind them mostly reacted from the sheer shock of the gruesome images of death they saw prior to stating their positions. But there are those contributions that were driven less by human reaction to terror but propelled by greed as they sway the situation only from the prism of “man must wack” and immediately see potential for blackmail or at least make some money from the highest bidders.

 Among these unpatriotic entities was one that took the cake for its daring attempt of making fools out of Nigerians. Anyone not familiar with Dr. Peregrino Brimah’s antecedents could be forgiven for thinking that his recent piece, “North’s Fulani Denial: Did Arase And Buratai Negotiate With Terrorists?”, was well intentioned and that he genuinely loves Nigeria. His dubious antecedents aside, the premise postulated in the questionable write up are full of holes that should alert the discerning to his true intentions. 

While I am not a mind reader, Brimah’s true intent is one of two things: he is either out to arm-twist Nigeria’s top military brass as has always been his desire or he is out to prove himself a loyal attack dog to his Iranian masters. Either way, the write up marks a new low for a confused being that is too disoriented to realise he should stop digging deeper into infamy after hitting rock bottom. For those who don’t know much about this Iranian mercenary, he is the same chap that wailed he was the loudest online about what he termed the Nigerian Army’s “disproportionate” response to the apparent threat to life of the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General TY Buratai with officers and men on his convoy. 

This was the fellow, who in a deranged fit of sponsored activism, virtually demanded that Nigeria ceases to exist to make way for a Shiite operated racket that answers to the Islamic Republic of Iran because this was what his recommended inaction on the part of the military would have amounted to.

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