Soldiers Not Protecting Middle Belters But Protecting Cows

By Mike Odeh James

A recent Punch report celebrated Nigerian soldiers for foiling a cattle-rustling attempt in Agatu Local Government Area of Benue State, complete with photographs of arrested men proudly displayed like trophies. The comments section was having none of it.

“This is the only thing the Nigerian Army knows how to do — guide Fulani terrorists to kill Benue citizens, then arrest innocent Benue youths and parade them as cattle rustlers to justify the killings,” one reader wrote.

That is not an exaggeration. That is a pattern.

The men arrested are not criminals by disposition — they are indigenes of a land soaked in the blood of their own people; survivors of years of Fulani terrorist massacres who have buried neighbours, fled burning homesteads, and watched their farmlands annexed by armed herders. The military knows this. It does not care.

These same soldiers — fully aware that Benue State has a legally operational anti-open grazing law — have deliberately looked the other way as Fulani herders brazenly violate that law, driving cattle across cultivated farmlands, destroying harvests and livelihoods, without a single arrest, a single query, or a single apology.

The selectivity is not incompetence. It is policy.

In Amadu, Taraba, soldiers ignored repeated community distress calls about Fulani attacks — then swooped in to arrest local men the moment Fulani complainants pointed fingers. In Abaji Kpav, troops deployed ostensibly against militants instead turned their boots on the very villagers they were sent to protect, beating elders and humiliating residents.

The Nigerian Army owes the Middle Belt an explanation. Who exactly are these soldiers serving — the Nigerian constitution, or the herdsmen’s cattle?