January 15,1966 Coup: Conversation Between Lt. Col Pam And His Murderers

Uneasy, they say, lies the head that wears the crown. In selfsame manner, we could be right to ascribe all the atrocities currently being perpetrated by the truant and nomadic Fulani herdsmen as brethren of the Nation’s President Muhammadu Buhari. He may not have instructed them to be so daring and destructive on their routine nomadic journeys from far and near, and had almost become a nightmare in every Nigerian community they lead their cattle grazing through farms and produce in their lugubrious trekking from North to the Southern towns. And for the records, in the President’s Assets Declaration in the past several years, he had always included some 150 Cows as part of his Assets, and it may well be that those looking after them could well fit the categorization as Fulani herdsmen. One is not too sure if they venture out of their enclaves to do collateral damages to their neighbours’ farmlands. Poet J.P Clark, one of the brightest a member of the literary triumvirate in Nigeria- Soyinka, Achebe and Clark, once wrote a poem about the species of nomadic Cattle Men whose legendary journeys from the far Saharan grassless lands to the deep tropical forests of the south. He wrote a poem titled THE COW FULANI and in the process, eulogizing the nomadic Cow Fulani for coming to feed the hungry cities in the South. In the past, the Cow Fulani was seen as a blessing of sort ‘coming to feed the hungry cities in the south’. Today, the scenario had changed from feeders of the hungry cities in the south and even the Middle Belt into horrific guests, bringing the proverbial carrot and the stick in dealing with their unsuspecting farm owners, spreading tears and blood on their foot paths.