This problem of violent and heavily armed herdsmen can be resolved scientifically

By Ayo Akinfe 

(1) This Ruga matter simply refuses to go away as the various component parts of Nigeria keep gearing up for a showdown over the government’s ill-advised divisive policy that has pitted brother against brother. When I read some of the inflammatory statements being made I just shudder. We need to take a chill pill 

(2) This desire to fight to the finish by throwing men into battle needlessly just shows our level of intellectual laziness once more. In 2019, you do not need to use AK47s to resolve such issues. Why not just use our brains 

(3) If armed Fulani herdsmen think they can take over your farmland, just use your superior know-how to defeat them. Ask yourselves how that Europeans managed to conquer and subjugate the whole of Africa within 50 years with just a few thousand men. There was only so much the Maxim Gun could do. They used their brains to outfox our forefathers 

(4) Now, I have proposed the construction of several mega ranches in key locations like Sambisa, Mokwa, Rano, Potiskum, etc. Basically, we need a law that prohibits the rearing of cattle outside designated ranches. If anyone wants to open a ranch in say Abia, Ogun or Rivers states, they should have to apply for a permit from the National Livestock Commission. If they do not, then their cattle should be seized 

(5) Personally, if I noticed that cattle were encroaching on my farm and eating my crops, I would not fight anyone. I would just insert a rinderpest virus into the water and within a few weeks, the menace will be over 

(6) Rinderpest is mainly transmitted by direct contact and by drinking contaminated water, although it could also be transmitted by air. If someone like Olu Falae has placed rinderpest tablets into the stream at his farm, he would never have had all those problems 

(7) What the likes of Ganiyu Adams and Nnamdi Kanu should be doing now rather than beating the drums of war is to tell their scientists to start work on a potent rinderpest virus. It should be made into tablets that can be added to water and into feed compounds that can be placed around farms 

(8) Death rates during rinderpest outbreaks are usually extremely high, approaching 100% in immunologically-naïve populations. It is actually very easy to make an area cattle-free using the virus 

(9) Do you know that rinderpest was one of more than a dozen agents the US researched as potential biological weapons before terminating its biological weapons programme? Also, it was also considered as a biological weapon in the UK's programme during World War Two 

(10) The good thing is that we now have antidotes to rinderpest, so once we establish veterinary clinics on approved ranches, the experts will be there to treat any outbreak. If any illegal herder brings his livestock to a ranch for treatment, he must sign an agreement never to venture off the ranch before his livestock is attended to. For me, this should be the answer to the war mongers in the so-called Coalition of Northern Groups