In the wake of reported rape and murder of women by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Edo State, the state government has commenced the process of registering all persons of Northern extraction living in the state. The most recent case was that of a pregnant woman who was raped and murdered in Ekpoma. Earlier, two women were reported killed in circumstances that suggested the complicity of herdsmen. The registration exercise was announced Governor Godwin Obaseki while breaking the fast with some of the state’s Arewa community during the last Ramadan season.
Obaseki said, “To check mate the ugly trend, a committee will be set up to carry out community-by-community delineation of northern settlers across the state to help identify new comers and their aim.” The Edo state initiative is coming in the wake of similar tendentious measures taken by some other states such as Lagos and Kaduna. For instance, Lagos state initiated a similar move that was smartly slanted to focus on registration of residents for ostensibly preferential treatment. That government went as far as establishing by law a Lagos State Residents Registration Agency (LSRRA) with provision for both online and manual registration and personal data capture operations.
Kaduna State was not left behind as the state government also commenced the process of registering residents through what it called the Kaduna Residency Registration Programme, KSRRP. It said it was conducting its exercise in collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC.
It is not difficult to see the Edo State development as part of a growing trend of ethnic based xenophobia that is enjoying active official support from state governments that should know better. Either by registering residents, settlers or so-called non-indigenes the exercise amounts to unlawful profiling of citizens for preferential or unequal treatment. Given the provision of the Nigerian Constitution for equal treatment for all citizens in any part of the country, hardly can any tendency that connotes discrimination by any government of any citizen be justified. The exercise of selective registration therefore offends the spirit if not the letter of the constitution by state governors that sore to an oath to defend it.
It is understandable that the recent killings of innocent women in Edo State may have induced the government to contemplate the extreme measure of profiling the Arewa community with the hope of locating and apprehending the herdsmen who are believed to be the culprits of the past crimes. However the futility of such expectation is self manifest as crime has no ethnic colouration. It is indefensible to ascribe the reported murders to the Arewa community without concrete proof of culpability. Rather the state government should intensify efforts to collaborate with the police and other stake holders in security of life and property to apprehend the killers of the women and bring them to justice.
Meanwhile even as Lagos and Kaduna may plead that they need the personal data of residents for planning purposes, the effort is futile as targeted typical residents are not stationary like monuments, but are mobile and may travel around the country while non residents may also come into the respective states. That is why any data base that is conducted outside of a national framework is invalid and misleading. This is also why NIM should be seen as failing in its duty of availing the country a workable data base for every citizen to minimize the flurry of sectional initiatives at profiling citizens on the basis of parochial criteria, which may prove explosive.
At a time like this when the country is ill at ease over divisive tendencies, it is the duty of every patriotic Nigerian to work towards keeping the country free from any tendency that fans the embers of ethnic misunderstanding. Edo State government should stop this poor conceived move now.
*The DEFENDER adopted this EDITORIAL from Daily Trust of Thursday July 13, 2017.
