SAVE OUR PEOPLE FROM HERDERS

This article contains offensive/disturbing pictures, please.

The belief that the press or the news media is the fourth estate of the realm is fast losing its wide acceptability as it has failed to measure up to its key role in influencing the political system positively for the benefit of the people. 

Today, what we have is, mostly, a press that serves as underdogs and pipers to tyrannical governments across the African continent and most especially, Nigeria. The press has failed the people in the aspect of balancing the news with all possible variable and is, therefore, currently seen to be solely serving the needs of the highest bidder in the lucrative business of politics today. It is not uncommon these days, for instance, to see media houses sing praises and shower encomiums on politicians while celebrating their irrelevant projects in the midst of the incessant bloodletting activities and carnage by herders, bandits, kidnappers and ritualists which are daily recorded in communities not so far away from such points of propagandistic celebrations  of bogus political projects. 

The submission above is not unconnected with the abject neglect by the press of some regions within the geopolitical zones of Nigeria the Ibarapa North region of Oyo State being chiefly, a grassroot region. The hordes of popular TV channels like the TVC, Channels, AIT, and others have become so choosy to the kind of news to be aired so much so that they turn blind eyes and deaf ears to various anguish-laden hues and cries of the downtrodden whose interests the fourth estate of the realm should equally serve.  

The unyielding wailings of the people of Igangan and its environs in reaction to the concerted carnage unleashed by herders have been on for quite some years now unabated but rather increasingly. This is owing largely to the irresponsive stance maintained by the media, the press, the law enforcement agents as well as the woeful failure of those charged with the responsibility of securing lives and property across the land.

It cannot but leave one wondering why the giants in the business of the press and media could fail to deploy reporters and news correspondents to these grassroot regions to expose the ongoing carnage with a view to ending it.

            Igangan is an agrarian community located in the north-west region of Ibarapa land in Oyo State. Suffice it to say that its economy and livelihood are driven chiefly by producing and maintaining crops and farmland. This implies that agriculture is tantamount to life for the people of Igangan as their lives and livelihood depend primarily on it.

            Unfortunately, the activities of the marauding gangs of herders over the past few years in the land of Igangan have painted the farms red with the blood of innocent farmers and their families' woes have geometrically multiplied as the gruesome attacks by these blood-thirsty herders on unarmed innocent farmers in Igangan have continued unabated. With no end in sight to this era of incessant massacres even with the consistent reports of the carnage to the Police, traditional rulers, Political Leaders, the Miyetti Allah Group the Seriki of Fulani in the region, an SOS call was, thus, made to the Sea Publishers via the representatives of Igangan Development Advocates, a Youth-based advocacy platform for the development of Igangan community to make this unwarranted bloodletting public to all the people of Nigeria as well as the International Human Rights Advocacy Groups and NGOs to end the gory theatres of macabre orgies currently overwhelming the hitherto flourishing land. 

   Cocoa farm set ablaze

These marauding demons' mission is not just to steal, to kill, and destroy. It is not just carnage, but also arson. They plunder farms at will unchallenged. And when your farm is grazing-unfriendly to their cows, set the farm on fire as shown in the inset pictures. They set cocoa farms on fire, kill farmers, gang-rape women, plunder farms destroy villages, and gradually take over the farms. These acts are nothing but criminal offenses and gross violations of the fundamental human rights of the people.  

   A woman gang-raped and macheted         

May I warn that this article contains offensive pictures of maimed, butchered and wounded victims from Igangan some of whom are well known and friends to the writer of this article. Some are dead already while some are half-alive and many are badly wounded by the butchering blows from the swords, spears, daggers, and other deadly weapons of these bestial herders.

            This article represents an SOS call from the less privileged people of Igangan whose world seemed to have been cut-off from the reach of the fourth estate of the realm - the media! NO news coverage of what is happening at these grassroots and remote parts of these rural areas even when lives are lost on a daily basis. Should we wait until an entire town is completely wiped out by these ferocious beasts before we take steps?  They want to forcefully take the lands and heritage of the people of Igangan. Therefore, they have resorted to killing and maiming to scare them off their lands and take over the lands. Their mission is to occupy the lands using offensive tactics. Their slogan is "kill them all" and take over their land while we stand and watch as innocent women and men are maimed, families rendered poor after being dispossessed of their only means of livelihood which, of course, is the farm, husbands being turned to widowers while wives are daily becoming widows in the hands of these herders.

They rape, torture, kidnap and kill like soldiers on the battlefield. Their brutal killings have left bitter tastes in the mouths of those who recount the ordeal. The time to retell the stories is over, the time for action is now!

            This is an SOS call on all well-meaning Nigerians, International bodies and NGOs, Human Right Organisations and Activists concerned mothers and fathers, threatened children and adults, vibrant youths and elders, everyone, without leaving anyone behind is summoned to come to the rescue of the people of Igangan and its environs so that posterity will judge us right in the end.