I do not know, even now, how to exactly react to last week’s abduction of Mr. Olu Falae, former Presidential Candidate of the AD in 1999, and even before that, former Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria, and his reported rescue by the Nigerian Police.
Two important details in that narrative stand out as both contradictory and disturbing: one is the fact, not yet contradicted, that he was kidnapped by armed “Fulani Herdsmen,” and the second is that he was rescued by the police, after four days of forced march from his farm in Ilado, Akure to Owo, all in Ondo State, in which he “trekked” with the herdsmen.
This story feels disturbing for two reasons: first, it continues to demonstrate the profound incompetence of the Nigerian Police and Security Services, and all the agencies charged with Nigeria’s Internal or Homeland security. It highlights the continued vulnerability of Nigerians for whom personal security remains uncertain and contingent on extremely outmoded operative procedures by a disorganized, badly staffed, and badly equipped and oriented National Police Service.
The news reporters were unable in fact to establish clearly in their reports, “how” Falae was retrieved from his abductors. I should say of the Vanguard report that, it was tantalizing and empty. “How Falae Was Freed,” went the rider, but nothing much else was given, only bits of how Mr. Falae was “escorted back home by security operatives” and that the escort party was apparently led by the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, and that the escort party rode into Akure in two marked Police SUVs.
The detail of the kinds of vehicles that escorted Falae home from his abductors seems irrelevant compared to the circumstances around his rescue, which were not reported. The fact that the Inspector General of Police escorted Falae home is irrelevant, unless he himself directly mounted the rescue effort; a fact which is unfortunately obscured by the report, and whose import should have given another dimension to the Falae kidnap story.
With an over bureaucratized police, it seems fairly clear that what persists in the mindset of those who currently provide governance to police affairs in Nigeria is mere symbolism rather than strategic and operational dexterity. Police operational reports ought normally to be public record in a civil society, and Nigerians have not been given the benefit of the truth about Falae’s kidnap and rescue.
Again, let me be upfront here and say that I write all these without the benefit of the details of that operation. But it would seem to me that what should be of greater import or significance to Nigerians would be an unraveling of the fact of who these armed Fulani Cattle herds are? What motivated their kidnapping of Mr. Falae? Were they paid Ransom? How much Ransom did they collect before releasing the septuagenarian former Public servant? Are there any arrests made?
Is the case still open, and if it is, what efforts and strategies are currently in place, and underway to arrest these so-called Fulani Cattle men who now dabble into the business of kidnapping, and for what reason? In fact, are these really Fulani Cattle herds? Or are we dealing with something far more serious, and far more lethal in its implication?
How is it that an entire police command could not isolate, and determine the path followed by “ordinary” cattle herdsmen who had kidnapped a man like Falae who is by no means difficult to identify? Mr. Falae says he was made to trek along these men, and one must therefore presume that the walk took the kidnapers first through Akure, and all the way to Owo, and that in four days, there were no trained police trackers; no track-dogs; no helicopters, no information gathering protocols that should have led to an earlier rescue.
That it took police four days to recover Mr. Falae is an indictment on the Ondo police Command, and the Department of State Services.
That no apparent arrests have so far been made is also quite profoundly disturbing because it does seem to me that those who took Olu Falae were no ordinary Fulani Cattle herdsmen. From the description of the invasion of his Ilado Farms, what took place was a very sophisticated military operation: fast, detailed, and professional. The twenty men, masquerading as Fulani Herdsmen, were clearly professionally trained. And so, if they are professionally trained, who are these men? What was their intention?
Certainly, it ought to be clear to any discerning observer that pastoral Fulani do not go about with the kind of sophisticated weaponry that has been described in the invasion of Falae’s farm, where his own workers and security people were very easily overpowered.
It seems almost clear to me that Boko Haram/Islamic State has entered into the Yoruba heartland, and circulating vigorously southwards. Because we are almost always not visually trained, Nigerians have very limited scope for describing people.
They lump types together, so that anybody who looks approximately Fulani is immediately called, “Fulani Herdsmen.” I do not think that anybody saw these so-called “Fulani” with herds of cattle. They may as well be Arabs; they may be, as I suspect, guerrilla groups that may have quietly infiltrated Nigeria right under the noses of Nigeria’s National Police and State Security Services.
We have generally allowed the kind of open border crossings for these Fulani pastoralists, Nigerian security men have hardly paid attention to the ways by which they could be the means for smuggling trained soldiers and ISIS guerillas intent on doing harm to Nigeria’s corporate interests.
I am drawn to this conclusion by the pattern of unfolding events: various reports of “Fulani cattlemen” killing people and fighting with sophisticated arms in various parts of the South and Middle belt of Nigeria is now so rife that it demands more serious scrutiny. No arrests are ever made.
It seems that these “Fulani herdsmen” live in the shadows, and mingle very easily with the elements. The latest abduction of Falae and the sophistication of the operation convinces me that we are not in fact dealing with ordinary Fulani pastoralists, we are dealing with highly trained soldiers and guerillas masking as herdsmen. We may be faced with a danger greater than our current imagination: we may have already among us sleeping cells of well-armed, well-trained, and subversives forces; masked insurgents waiting to be activated – operating currently as herdsmen. Their target: conquest.
As Olu Falae just discovered, perhaps one day, the key political and business elite, especially in the South, may wake up and discover only too late, that the “Maiguards” at their gates selling cigarettes and listening to the BBC, are much more than they bargained for. Why? Because there is hardly a sense of the complexity and urgency of the situation. These are no Fulani Cattle herdsmen. These are guerillas; and they are the auguries that may make the rain that will drench us all, if we do not arrest this phenomenon immediately. The Nigerian security services are either too broken or too incompetent to act. And as I see it, Olu Falae’s kidnap is a test shot.
This article was originally published on Vanguard.