Agatu Massacre by Fulani Herdsmen Terrorists
Post Massacre Eye Witness Report
Mgbeke Obi
10 March at 00:41 ·
FULANI MASSACRE (Final Report)
Victor Oladokun
I'm posting the final report from a dear friend who has just returned
from a fact-finding mission to Benue State, following the recent Fulani
massacre. This is not the first time atrocities will be committed by
Fulani militants, but hopefully, the last.
HIGHLIGHTS:
1. Our convoy doubled to 10 cars plus soldiers, police and bikers. We had two-three minute stops. At one, I ventured ahead of the security perimeter and discovered our first decomposing body. A first even for me. I usually count tombstones.
2. Our convoy ran into the Fulani herdsmen and droves of cattle on multiple occasions. Sometimes we stopped to let them cross not knowing if it was an ambush. They were right outside our windows. No one wanted to engage because the outcome was unpredictable. I have never seen free range killers walking free before.
However our security escort did engage when they saw several armed Fulanis on a bike trying to flee. They abandoned one man who was injured and he was taken into our custody. Our captured killer didn't survive the rough terrain drive.
3. In the only village where we saw human survivors, we were told these people had just been attacked and were alerted we were coming so they bolted and ran into us.
(Fulani militants claim local residents killed 10,000 of their cattle).
It is simply inconceivable and logistically improbable to kill 10,000 cows without a major military operation utilizing rocked propelled grenades, attack helicopters etc. such a mass slaughter would take weeks and the skeletal remains of the cows would completely dot the landscape of Agatu and the stench would permeate the air.
What I saw in Agatu:
1. Dead human bodies still on the ground and in homes - decomposed.
2. Cows roaming through empty villages and in one case walking up to a dead human body. We left before the sacrilege of them desecrating the poor dead boy.
3. Thousands and thousands of cattle grazing on
people's farms - well over 10,000 live cattle. Several times we had to
stop our cars to let the cattle pass. I have never seen that many cattle
in my entire life.
4. Burnt crops farmers had harvested and set aside for replanting. They were in charred heaps on the farms.
5. Fulani herdsmen accompanying the cattle. Some ran when they saw us but some just continued as if we didn't exist.
6. Grains of farmers, peppers etc scattered on the ground in the towns
and also along the way between the villages. The likely belonged to
people on their way back from farms or markets or people fleeing with
some food who were ambushed as they ran.
7. Motor bikes and bicycles
destroyed in the villages and on the road side in between. Again it
appears people who were fleeing on bikes were ambushed as well.
8. Rows and rows of houses destroyed in at least 8 villages visited. It was complete and utter destruction.
9. Freshly lit fires still burning in a couple of villages indicating the arsonist had just left. We saw jerrycans along the way indicating fuel may have been utilized to fuel the fires.
10. Only in one out of 8 towns did we see any live humans - about 4 men.
What we didn't see in Agatu this week:
1. Not a single dead cow
2. Not a single soldier or policeman in the affected communities.
3. Not a single burnt mosque where everything else was razed.
4. Not a single living Agatu person in 7 out of 8 villages.
Conclusion: even if it were true that cattle were killed by the Agatu (there was no supporting evidence of this) the farms, homes and people of Agatu were massacred as well-evidenced by our team.
1.If the claimed casualties of the Fulani are cows and the claimed casualties of the Agatu are humans, then this could not be rightly called an Ethnic conflict.
Cows are not people or an ethnic group.
2. If the loss claimed by the Fulani is livestock i.e. animals, this would be a criminal case of theft or destruction of property and not the basis for a massacre.
3. The Fulani are not indigenes of Benue and are not an ethnic group in Benue state. Their incursion from outside into Benue is more an invasion than an ethnic clash.
Finally, the statement attributed to the Fulani is an admission of guilt and a defense of provocation. The authorities should act accordingly and take the confessed perpetrators into custody for immediate prosecution.
Finally, I recall the State governor telling us the Fulani attacks are worse than Boko Haram - "BH occupies a town, kills some people and recruits some. The Fulanis destroy everything."
This seems not to be an exaggeration. Last year, the Catholic Church reported 70 churches destroyed. This is happening in my home state - the most Christian State in Northern Nigeria!
President Buhari once described Boko Haram as a good example of a small fire not quenched quickly and decisively becoming great fire with devastating consequences. I am afraid that we are watching another small fire get increasing bigger and bolder with potentially more devastating consequences than Boko Haram. And those who are still denying this problem and/ or defending the perpetrators remind me of the saying that a mind is like a parachute - it only works when it is open. If those of us who supported Buhari during the recent presidential election wants him to succeed in the interest of the country, we must avoid the temptation to downplay problems evident under his watch and leadership. Nigerians voted for change (and rightly so in my mind). These senseless killings that is approaching genocide must stop for a change.
Okey Ukaga
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President Buhari once described Boko Haram as a good example of a small fire not quenched quickly and decisively becoming great fire with devastating consequences. I am afraid that we are watching another small fire get increasing bigger and bolder with potentially more devastating consequences than Boko Haram. And those who are still denying this problem and/ or defending the perpetrators remind me of the saying that a mind is like a parachute - it only works when it is open. If those of us who supported Buhari during the recent presidential election want him to succeed in the interest of the country, we must avoid the temptation to downplay problems evident under his watch and leadership. Nigerians voted for change (and rightly so in my mind). These senseless killings that are approaching genocide must stop for a change.
Okey Ukaga
Lord Obadiah Mailafia,
Believe it or not, you have such an uplifting effect on me: Every time I see your name in print, I think of this great teacher : Abraham Abulafia and his prophetic mysticism
I agree with you: Sometimes, Ogbeni Kadiri must be lightly rebuked for his Gradgrindian QED type logic although it is never his intention to be a heartless kind of fellow but sometimes falling over all kinds of clues, he may get lost in the fog when like super sleuth Inspector Clouseau he trips and falls over his own logic.
For some of us the first introduction was John Pepper Clark’s Fulani Cattle
Another famous line of poetry by Wilfred Owen – the anti-War poet, the first line of his Anthem for Doomed Youth : What passing bells for those who die as cattle ?
As human beings, our sympathy should reach out - and not only to “the victims of the Fulani herdsmen”
I thought of them when I read this news item a few days ago. For the vegetarian Hindus the sympathy also reaches out to the innocent cows too .
Benjamin Zephaniah’s vegan poems – especially his Mother Cow Speaks could as well have been addressed to the Nestle people :
“Leave my milk
For my baby
That is our
And you are crazy.
Go and drink your own.
My baby needs this milk
And maybe
Your mind is messed up and hazy
All that milk is ours
Leave it be
Leave our milk alone.
We all make milk
For our
Own kind
That is nature’s plan
You’ll find,
So leave that milk
For my baby
If you would be
So kind.”
Donald Trump wasn’t being a hypocrites when he spoke out strongly against what is common knowledge : the heinous crimes of Muslim Jihadists slaughtering Christians. It would be in place for Muslim leaders to be speaking out forcibly against this in Nigeria too.
Your words certainly strikes a chord in the hearts of all but the heatless: “The suffering and pain the peoples of the Middle Belt and their Church -- and our Holy People -- have experienced has reached the ears of the Almighty God. He will confound our enemies. And those who have risen against us with the sword are under the curse and judgement of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”
Somebody should write to President Buhari about this. The kind of letter that would move him…
Tell him, the word is mightier than the sword
Cornelius
It’s criminal to quote a poem less than absolutely correctly. Otherwise why not go and write your own poem? Maximum apologies to Benjamin Zephaniah and his publisher. The poem “Mother Cow Speaks “ should read:
"Leave my milk
For my baby
That is ours
And you are crazy,
I think that you are just being lazy
Go and drink your own.
My baby needs this milk
And maybe
Your mind is messed up and hazy
All that milk is ours
Leave it be
Leave our milk alone.
We all make milk
For our
Own kind
That is nature's plan
You'll find,
So leave that milk
For my baby
If you would be
So kind."
My brother John Patrick Johnson is with me right now as I am writing this.
And now I’m impressed. Again, you surprise and inspire me : the Baal Shem Tov
After my grandmother, greatest storyteller, Isaac Bashevis Singer
You would have bowled me over completely if you had included my overall favourite from Poland Bruno Schulz. And in the dimension heaven above Schulz , Chopin – on the earth sphere still, these guys
And by the way, I heard, live and direct the greatest living Talmudist Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz say at the Great Synagogue of Stockholm: ”We all came from Africa!” Those were his opening remarks. I pinched the Polish guy who was sitting next to me and he whispered in my ear “There’s always a Black Sheep in the family.” On that occasion it was the celebration of x number of years of Jewish presence in Sweden and Rabbi Steinsaltz was the guest speaker. I don’t know what Chinweizu would say about this and of course I don’t care but I wonder about it since he was very critical of Wole Soyinka’s poem “To my first white hairs", anyway, I’ll just say this, that when I saw the whiteness of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s long white beard , I trembled , was literally sitting on the edge of my seat and mentally prepared to absorb his every indelible word - but after the he said “We all came from Africa” – and I misquote him not, he was brief and he more or less wrapped it up in two sentences : that we the people had been yapping much and now it was time to do!
And that was all. That was it. No long, profound philosophical drasha. OK boys and girls you can now go home….
You hit a nerve here, when you say :” I lived and worked in Brussels for many years. Even in the innermost sanctums of the EU Commission, I sensed a barely concealed hatred for Israel and the Holy People” and add Pour moi, jamais!
It’s the same thing here in many strata of Swedish society and among some of the otherwise most extraordinarily generous people you say one word Israel - and it brings out the worst in them.
N. B. when you factor in ahimsa and the general reverence for life, then you understand that for Hindus , not only the cow is sacred. This knowledge came in handy for the divide and rule people who wanted to create and manipulate sectarian tensions prior to the partition of India – a simple formula for the ritual cycle of provocation: slaughter a cow outside a Hindu temple and all you saw was a turbaned head in full flight, disappearing around the next corner – that evening hundreds dead in the violent Hindu- Musulman clashes that would follow…
“A mercy to the world” is one of the epithets that adorns the Prophet of Islam ( s.a.w) and “The religion of peace” is the other epithet that’s meant to describe the religion of Islam of which Muslims and indeed the Quran itself says 3: 85 “And whoever desires other than Islam as religion - never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers”
As you just said, “you never can tell with destiny” and so I can tell that you were not at the Brussels Airport when some apostles of terror struck , claiming 31 innocent lives.
Concerning what you said in your earlier post, “In the Laws of War as taught my one of my esteemed teachers Sir Adam Roberts, enemy combatants can be executed for war crimes. When enemies cross into your side of the border bearing arms, they are enemy combatants and you have a right to kill them before they kill you “ – this tallies wholly with the Judaic teaching about the terrorist that’s on his way to kill you and the moral obligation to kill him first : “If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first”
Lord Mailafia, on the Shabbat that we observed on the 4-5th of this month Shabbat Shekalim, Shabbat Mervachim (Torah Portion Vayakhel ) after the service I got to talking with one of the security men (I had not met him before) and he told me that he used to be just like you Lord Mailafia, “believer in Yeshua ha Mashiach” and all that jazz – but he says that he saw the light and converted to Orthodox Judaism about two years ago. Of course when he met me he wanted to know if my mother was Jewish and it was on the tip of my tongue to remind him WHO my Heavenly and our Heavenly Father is, Avinu Malkeinu
Lord Mailafia , I should like to share something precious with you, it’s what I read very pensively this afternoon and it’s all here except for the last eight lines pages 357-361 : The Ethical Dimension of Jewish Prayer
Here are the last eight lines : “( before saying the blessing) for each of the four cups of wine. It starts out with Hineni mukhan umezuma ( “ I am hereby ready and prepared to fulfil the mitzvah of….”)
One should think that such a declaration, said before one begins to pray, should address itself to” the mitzvah of worshipping God”. And so it does, but the passage surprisingly goes on to include still another mitzvah, this one meant to be the outcome of engaging in prayer. That mitzvah, from Leviticus 19 is “ Love thy neighbour as thyself”
To your “ Let us all aspire to be counted among the secret holy ones who will redeem Africa!” I say Amen!
Sincerely,
Cornelius
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