ON April 17, four men travelling from the Ilogbo area of Ogun State to attend a burial in the Saki area of Oyo State were waylaid by a deadly gang of herdsmen on the highway. One of the victims, Nurudeen Olaitan Salami, who was later freed by the abductors, said he watched in horror as the terrorists shot eight captives dead. Hear him: “They hit us constantly with sticks and the flat ends of cutlasses, and also slapped us repeatedly. They had on them a phone that looked like a satellite phone which they charged with a solar panel and used to communicate with their contacts and family members of victims. They didn’t want to see any iPhone at all. So, the iPhones they seized from us, including mine, were all smashed on the ground and destroyed. Only seven of the nine passengers in our bus were kidnapped while two Fulani passengers and the driver of the bus were allowed to go. But inside the forest, we met no fewer than 11 other victims, including a woman and her three young children kidnapped from their residence when the herdsmen could not get her wealthy husband.…Then suddenly, we heard sounds of gunshots from a distance. The shots were fired by a combined team of policemen and soldiers and the bandits returned fire too to scare the law enforcement team. After the gunshots ceased, the leader of the gang returned to where we were kept in the forest and shot eight of their captives dead, including a 13-year-old boy. My friends, Omogbolahan Olakunle and Oriade Jolaiya, were among the eight captives killed.”

Concerns have been mounting in recent times over the renewed onslaughts by nomadic terrorists in the South-West. The outlaws have struck in Ogun, Ekiti and Oyo states. The sum of N31 million was recently paid as ransom on three people who got kidnapped at Longe village on the Ibadan-Ijebu Ode Road in Oyo State. Similarly, on Thursday, May 16, one Alhaja Seliat Adeniji (nee Raji) was reportedly kidnapped in her Ebedi home in Iseyin, Oyo State. The South-West areas hard hit by the Fulani herders activities include Otu, Igbeti and Alaga in Oke Ogun area of Oyo State. Banditry, armed robbery, kidnapping are taking place on the Lagos-Ibadan, Ibadan-Ijebu-Ode road; Akure-Ilesa-Ibadan road; Ore-Ijebu Ode-Lagos, Ikirun-Osogbo-Ilesa road and the Lokoja-Abuja, Owo-Benin and Ibadan-Iseyin-Saki roads. Of course, outside the South-West, kidnapping and banditry are on the rise. On Monday, May 13, eight cocoa farmers were kidnapped at Marindoti Cocoa Farmers’ settlement in Ovia South-West local government area of Edo State. In the same area, three students of Millicent Secondary School who were said to be on their way to write their Senior Secondary School Examination also got kidnapped at about the same time.

To say the very least, the attacks in the South-West amount to a flagrant disdain for the peace accord signed recently by farmers and herders in the region. The coordinator of the Commodities Farmers Organisation in the South-West, Segun Dasaolu, and the President of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, Othman Ngelzarma, respectively signed the peace pact on behalf of the two groups at a summit held at the International Conference Centre, University of Ibadan. Ngelzarma and Dasaolu told the world that the step became necessary for peace to reign supreme in the South-West and Nigeria at large. Already, the crisis has worsened food insecurity in the zone and Nigeria as a whole. A recent study by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) lamented that Nigerian women farmers, including those in the South-West, had become easy targets for kidnappers, robbers, rapists, and killers who daily walk into their farms to inflict violence on them. It is distressing that an otherwise peaceful zone has become home to terrorist violence. Surely, security organisations cannot continue to fold their arms while terrorists have a field day.

We deplore the upsurge in banditry, kidnapping and other criminal activities. Given that some of the governors in the zone have demonstrated above average security interventions in their states, it is apposite to ask what the worsening security situation really signposts. First, it is sufficiently clear that the security agencies must shake off their seeming slumber. The spate of banditry has been occasioned largely by failure of intelligence gathering on their part, and this suggests that the kind of synergy that should obtain between them and the people in the affected communities is not yet in place. The security agencies should actively seek to build trust among the people in such a way that they would readily approach them with timely and relevant information. That would go a long way in stemming bloodshed and creating a peaceful atmosphere in which democracy can thrive.

Besides, the South-West Nigeria Security Network, otherwise known as Amotekun, should ensure proper coordination of its activities across the zone. It should, in addition, be equipped with the requisite arms. Confronting terrorists wielding sophisticated weapons with dane guns is fraught with dangers. Then there is, of course, the overarching issue of the institutionalisation of state policing. We urge the South-West governors to seize the momentum in favour of state policing in the country, collaborate with the state assemblies, the National Assembly and the Presidency, and ensure that state policing takes off this year. That way, they would be equipped with the wherewithal to tackle insecurity head on. In the meantime, the governors can show more affinity towards engaging local hunters and vigilance groups, and heads of communities, bringing them more frontally into the security loop and establishing lines of communication between them and the security agencies.

The murderous onslaughts of terrorists masquerading as herders pose grave danger to a people already famished by the effects of government policies and the pangs of inflation. The time to act is now.