The Fulani herdsmen debacle has moved another notch. Ignoring the ominous signals being emitted thereof could result in dire consequences. Avoidable as it is, the time to act is now and with surgical precision.
Conflicting reports have been adduced to what triggered the new wave of attacks with the security agents allegedly becoming targets of the armed herdsmen.
The reaction of the youth and others to defend themselves when the herdsmen continue on this bloody tangent is understandable although we would rather things are not allowed to degenerate to this level. A situation where aggrieved persons arm themselves and ready to take on so-called aggressors presupposes a lost confidence in the security agencies or even a breakdown of law and order.
The foregone scenario, anarchy, is not what any democratically elected government would want to be associated with. It is the responsibility of the state to provide security to citizens so they can go about their legitimate businesses without fear and panic. We therefore have confidence in the government’s ability and resolve to deal with the emerging development in the Ashanti Akim North District of the Ashanti Region and elsewhere in the country where nomads continue to threaten the security of the indigenes.
It is in this light that we are excited about the Ashanti Regional Minister’s announcement that he and the regional Security Council would implement the 2012 court ruling on the Fulani debacle which has now become a conundrum, an albatross around the neck of the government.
Although an inherited challenge, political killjoys would prefer attributing it to the government of the day; a mischief which cannot pass integrity test anyway.
Anything lacking in a frontal response to the now heightened emergency in the cattle grazing parts of the country would embolden the perpetrators of the lawlessness which has snuffed life out of many residents and seen an assortment of human rights abuses committed.
We do not know what the roadmap is regarding addressing the grazing challenge but can state that we have reached precipice.
Best practices which should be replicated here is ordering, as the authorities of Benue State of Nigeria have done, that all cattle owners confine their livestock to ranches.
It is anachronistic to allow the free range module to continue to apply when its negative fallouts are not far-fetched.
We have heard about the allegations that powerful persons in society own some of the cattle which do not fall within the segment of those brought here by nomads and that is the reason the problem is being denied the attention it requires. Be it as it may, government would not allow the foregone to constitute a stumbling block to its resolve to rid the country of killer Fulanis.
If security agents have become targets of nomads then citizens, unarmed, would become lame ducks for the aggressors who have their fingers on the trigger.
Operation Cow Leg was recently re-launched and promised the necessary logistics to prosecute its mission. From the look of things, however, the operation needs a fine-tuning – given the resolve of the nomads not to surrender and showing all traits of ready to fight whoever stops their cattle from grazing freely if even the locations are farms.