By Ori Martins
The gruesome murder of Effium people in Ohaukwu Local Government Area of Ebonyi State by suspected Fulani herders has once again brought to the fore even as the question must be asked: can’t Ndigbo do without cows?
Up to the late 1990s Ndigbo went about their ceremonies using the Igbo species of cow called ehi/efi, dogs, goats, sheep, and fowls. They only made use of the Hausa/Fulani cow meat as an additional source of protein.
However, since the early 1990s, the way and manner Ndigbo have been promoting the use of the Hausa/Fulani specie of cow is not only disgusting but nauseating.
During burials, Ndigbo no longer buy their traditional domestic animals as listed above. They rather order or purchase the Hausa/Fulani species of cow which now costs fortunes.
If the funeral is about an aged man or woman, the mourners, based on the happenings of the prevailing circumstances, would be compelled to buy at least two cows in order to give their father, mother a befitting burial.
To this effect, the activities of the currently dreaded Fulani herdsmen are exponentially in the increase. Why? The answer is because Ndigbo do not promote their home grown domestic animals any longer.
All around them are the cattle bred by Hausa/Fulani. It can be said that the consumption rate of cattle in the South East is the highest compared with that of other zones in the country. Since Ndigbo cannot effectively carryout any function meaningfully without slaughtering cows, it therefore goes to say that the breeding of cows by Fulani herders in the South East also increased substantially.
The effect is that most of the herders who now carry arms rather than sticks have constituted themselves as threats to most of the communities in Igbo nation in the guise rearing their cattle. As it was reported by a national newspaper, ‘’On May 8, 2016, Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State was personally driving a bus full of journalists from Owerri to Orlu. A group of about 50 cows barged into the Owerri-Orlu Road, apparently from nowhere.
The armed herder did not bother about the shrill blasts of the convoy’s sirens and calmly kept on walking his animals along the same road, making no effort to make way for the governor’’ If the herders had no respect for a state governor in a convoy, imagine who else they would respect or treat with dignity.
Recall that in the same 2016, innocent and harmless people in Ukpabi-Nimbo in Enugu State were cruelly massacred by Fulani herdsmen. Governor Ifeanyi Ugwanyi rushed to Aso Villa to shed tears for President Buhari who ordered the law enforcement agents to bring the hoodlums to book, but later made it clear that the marauders were “not Nigerians”!
The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, has since picked up the same refrain: “armed herdsmen are not Nigerians”. You see now, there are real herdsmen and non Nigerian herdsmen – the ones carrying arms! It is really devastating.
The fact here is, before the emergence of Buhari, the herders were not as deadly as they are now. They settled peacefully and quietly in any location in any state in Nigeria. But they are currently well armed and almost on weekly basis, murder innocent Nigerians in cold blood and no questions are asked and nothing happens eventually.
So, what if the Igbo start today to boycott using the cattle in all their occasions? What if the Igbo begin to breed their own cattle? Or is it that cattle rearing is an exclusive right to the Fulani? Chief Charles Osondu Nwachukwu is a community leader in Umuhu, Okwuato of Aboh Mbaise LGA, Imo State. According to him, ‘’the problem really is not the entire Fulani herdsmen. The case is against the Fulani herders who are carrying arms, killing and maiming here and there.
Therefore, the task is on the Federal Government of Nigeria to fish out those bad ones and deal with them squarely. Mind you that during the military era, Nigeria was marked as a pariah state but not all Nigerians were bad then. In this case, it has been established that there are herders who are illegally carrying arms.
What the security agencies can do now is to fish out the bad eggs among the herdsmen and bring them to book.
On the other hand, I support the idea that Ndigbo must return to their roots by using our domestic animals for our festivals. In this way, there will not be any need for the herders to be trooping to Igbo nation to wreck havoc. Again, Igbo rich men can equally commence cattle rearing.
By so doing the influx of Fulani cattle breeders who are bearing arms would drastically reduce’’
