by Tosin Adesina

According to Wikipedia, body language also known as kinesics is a type of non-verbal communication in which physical behaviour, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information.

The unabated Southern Kaduna crisis and other crises involving Fulani herdsmen in the country has been attributed to the poor body language of the President who himself is the Grand Patron of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association in Nigeria.

To start with, the Fulani crisis has been a pre-Buhari occurrence with little skirmishes here and there but the prominence it attained in two years of the Buhari administration gave credence to accusations that the president is in support of the heinous acts.

Examples of these abounds in the refusal of the Federal Government to take a decisive step on the attacks at the initial stage. The government spent its energy attributing the upsurge to the activities of the “defeated” Boko Haram terrorist masquerading as Fulani herdsmen.

The defence took a dramatic turn when the Minister of Information Alhaji Lai Mohammed declared that cows come into the country all the way from Mauritius – thousands of miles away from us.

The presidency on several occasions maintained its stand on the non- culpability of the Fulanis in the crisis. This laid back approach of the president may just have been all the encouragement the herdsmen needed to cause chaos.

The prominence Fulani cattle rearers have gained in Nigeria today is unbelievable. Everywhere you go you see herds of cattle, from the Abuja airport road to the National stadium Abuja, major highways in the country are not spared and even the National Youth Service Corps orientation camp in Adamawa has its own story to tell on the herdsmen menace. The boldness of the herdsmen to demand for grazing reserves in areas such as Enugu, Delta and others has brought to question the stand of the presidency on issues relating to Fulani herdsmen.

The Kaduna Governor, Nasir el-Rufai was once quoted as saying he paid rampaging Fulani herdsmen money to placate them after they attacked the innocent people of Southern Kaduna. Hid statement received a rousing condemnation across the country, as he was accused of taking sides with his ‘brothers’ and the resultant effect was better imagined than experienced as the suspected herdsmen attacked the communities days later.

The body language of the President and the Kaduna Governor has been done nothing but emboldened the herdsmen.

Will this change in the coming weeks? We wait to see.

Editor