An Open Letter To Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo On How To End The Fulani Menance In Igbo Land – Dave Agwalla

An open letter to the President General of Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo on how to end the Fulani herdsmen Menance in Igbo Land as made available to PROFJAYSBLOG.

My Piece to;
His Excellency, the
President General of Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, worldwide.

Dear Sir,
My Personal Suggestions To End The Fulani Menace.

The only quick & most effective way of driving away the killer Fulanis & their cows from our region is by urging our people to stop eating cow meat immediately.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this if that’s what will keep our people safe especially at a time like this when little or nothing is done to protect them.

Governments & people the world over are known to ban products or materials that are either not in their strategic, economic & social interests or bad for their health. All the above are known to apply in our own situation today.

This ban can be achieved through the town unions, churches & our traditional rulers as we can not continue to embark on a habit that’s both endangers our lives & detrimental to our health. Ohanaeze must do more to protect our people. As a matter of fact, we are on our own.

Communities should be encouraged to, at the next August meetings across the southeast, put this in their agendas & allow the people to vote overwhelmingly to outlaw the consumption of cow meat. Huge Fines, about 10 times the cost of a cow, should be imposed on each cow for those who insist on buying them for burials & other events. The youths who should implement this policy must insist offenders pay such fines before bringing cows to the communities & the local people asked not to attend or eat cow meat at such events.

A close northern friend of mine, who does not like what is going on, confirmed to me that only few families in the north still eat cow mest today. That their choice meat is ram which we all know & see them slaugter during Sallah or Ramadan festivals. He went on to say that Southern Nigeria, especially the Southeast & Southsouth are the biggest cow markets for cows in Africa, hence the large numbers we see on our roads & farms. That if our people stop celebrating with or eating cow meat, the cows will start dying after a while & the Fulanis will have no choice than to retreat & leave our land.

The current situation or practice in the southeast for instance, where over 180,000 cows are slaughtered each week for burials & other social events, work against our fight to keep the killer Fulanis away. It really makes no sense that we are patronising & consuming cows in such large quantities, from the same people & the animals that kidnapping, raping, killing our people & devastating our farms.
If we stop this practice, the Fulani herdsmen, cattle markets & the animals, mostly infected, will disappear from our land over time.

That will also encourage our people to grow our own local cows, Efi Igbo, which are of better meat quality. The practice will also provide jobs, & earn a lot of revenue from outside our region because it will be the choice meat for people.

At the current rate & level of consumption cows or patronage to the Fulanis, the southeast as a region, will be grossing about N30 billion from our own local cows in the region alone every week. About same amount or more will be earned from the ones we sell outside the region. Big business indeed.

I support the statement contained in the last press release by the Ohanaeze President which indicated that, we will accept if our people in the north are asked to leave & every northerner & their animals, including beggers leave our land if that will make us safer. He went further to state that we shall bring down the little existing federal structures down here & set up our own. That’s some wisdom & sincere show of love for ones people in trying times.

My takes are; that we cannot because our people live in the north & prefer to invest there instead of home, with all the uncertainties they are exposed to & losses encountered over the years, do nothing & allow our land to keep being invaded & our people killed down here. It is the high time Igbos in the north & in the diaspora, started thinking seriously about investments back home just like the notherners & south westerners do.
That we, back home, can no longer afford to keep quiete & constantly live in fear of what might happen to them in the north & not defend ourselves in the face of unprecedented invassion, kidnappings, rape, robbery & killings.

Fulanis & cows are not the only northerners or products from the north that we live happily with & enjoy. There are other northerners who live peacefully/ happily among us. Fulanis too have good people as they are not all cattle herders. I personally had Fulani schoolmates who have remained my good friends till this day. Not all Fulanis are happy with what is happening. That’s a fact we must all recognise. We are talking about a segment of that population here, those sponsored by an extreemist group, the Myetti Allah, with a completely different agenda. People who place higher value or premium on cows or animals over human beings.

While it is the primary or first line responsibility of governments, at all levels, to protect the lives & properties of their citizens, a reponsibility sworn to, but abandoned today, refusal or failure by the security agencies to enforce the laws against known criminals, for whatever reason which portray them as weak institutions whose action or inaction is entirely dependent on the mood of whoever is the leader at any given time, the need to identify with the people is paramount.

We, our Ohanaeze & states, do not sponsor, support, defend or protect criminal elements in the north who are from our clime. We condemn criminality by any people at all levels, but we will neither encourage nor tolerate any group or authority sponsoring same against our land or people.

Much as we believe in one, but divisible Nigeria, if need be, we urge that our governments, at every level, protect the lives & properties of their citizens as enshrined in the constutution to guarranttee a peaceful co-existence in Nigeria.

We live in different times today & must device survival means/skills. Period!
Dave Agwalla