To make his changing of the service chiefs effective, Tinubu needs to get the National Assembly to pass a new Security Vote Amendment Bill

Ayo Akinfe

[1] First of all, the federal government needs to make a statement on the activities of armed Fulani herdsmen, who operated with such impunity under President Buhari. They were no longer just armed robbery but something of an industry taking over the country’s motorways

[2] What made them particularly frightening was the ethnic dimension of the scourge. Traditionally, armed robbery in Nigeria has been multi-ethnic and equal opportunity but this recent pandemic is more or less wholly Fulani as the perpetrators only speak Fulfude. To remedy this anomaly, we need new laws past fast by our National Assembly

[3] What I struggle to get my head round is how did these guys manage to open camps all over Nigeria where they train their members and build hostage detention centres without anybody noticing. Kidnapping actually started off as a localised business in the southeast but it appears the Fulani have now taken over and turned it into a nationwide phenomenon

[4] When Evans and his gang were in business, they were a wholly Igbo operation, kidnapping Igbo victims across the southeast, so it did not have any ethnic dimension to it. We dismissed it as an “Igbo problem.” Today, we are paying the price for this negligence

[5] Over the last eight years, armed Fulani kidnappers have forest dens in virtually every state of Nigeria from where they attack any motorway. They have exploited the growth of online banking in Nigeria to the maximum by getting the families of victims to transfer money into accounts without making contact

[6] What I do not get is why nobody tracked these funds. At some stage, the kidnappers have to withdraw the money from the bank, which is where the police should be waiting for them. As things stand, the kidnappers are free to do as they please with no hindrance whatsoever

[7] Every state in Nigeria has a police commissioner with men under his command. Is there anything stopping them raiding these camps, closing down these bank accounts and policing these motorways to end this scourge?

[8] I hope President Tinubu realises that it is only a matter of time before this sparks another major ethnic crisis? Just imagine what will happen if Ipob youths storm a Fulani camp in the southeast. They will cleanse the place of these criminals and before you know it, there will be reprisals in northern Nigeria. Alas, within a week, we will have a full blown ethnic cleansing catastrophe on our hands

[9] Over the long term, what bothers me most is that we have set an ugly precedent of one ethnic group being able to act with impunity and in defiance of the law simply because the president is one of theirs. This ugly trend can set off a chain reaction with other ethnic groups following suit in the future. It could also lead to the Fulani reluctant to ever allow anyone who is not one of theirs become president. Their leaders will be under pressure not to risk being “in opposition.”

[10] President Tinubu now needs to get the National Assembly to pass a Nigerian Security Vote Amendment Bill, paying money directly to state police commissioners instead of governors. Let this at least be the start of the fightback