Dagger bearing fulani boys on the street of Ekiti -By Om’Oba Jerry Adesewo

It was about 5pm local time as we left a meeting around the Deputy Governor’s office in Ado Ekiti and taking a walk around Ọja Oba.

My attention was drawn to 3 young Fulani boys, dressed in jeans trousers and top. Protruding from underneath the jacket of each of them, is a sheared dagger (short sword) as they walk around the market.

We glossed over it as we watch them melted into the busy Ọja Oba market.

Throughout the night however, this pictures plays on my mind like a game off ping-pong. How come this is allowed? How could these guys be allowed to carry such dangerous weapons around town without check? What is happening to us?. Is this now part of a fashion statement?

The fact that they ‘wear’ their dagger about town so openly and confidently shows that something is fundamentally wrong. It does mean that they can decide to unleash terror as they please and when they please.

The battery of my phone was down at the time, and beside, I didn’t mean much to me at first sight, I would have taken a picture, and send to the Police Command in Ekiti. Why should such be allowed?

I remember carrying a walking stick. The types that have a sword inside it around in my car around 2016. It was used for my production of August Steinberg’s #danceofdeath. The police saw it in my trunk and I was in for a long interrogation as I had to prove to them that it was only a prop and they saw all the other costumes and props and a picture of a previous production before allowing me to go.

That was in Abuja. And they seized the sword. But here, in 2019 and at a time when the nation is under serious security threat, in which the Fulani herdsmen are the prime actors, you have 3 young able bodied men carrying dagger around town as if they are security personnel.

Something is wrong. And something must be done to arrest the situation. The people of Ekiti cannot afford to sleep with both eyes close, or they would have been sleeping with fire on their mountain. Those boys must be fished out and disarmed.

We must not wait until they unleash terror on the people as has become a norm in Yoruba land and other places now before we start administering ‘medicine after death’. The Nigerian Police across the country, and especially in the South must be up and doing. The citizens themselves must be at alert.

The fear of dangerous Fulani herdsmen should be the beginning of wisdom. Life is precious.