The flight to Maiduguri, last week Tuesday evening, had been delayed for more than three hours. And at a point, not a few passengers had become apprehensive that it might be cancelled. Eventually though, we took off and one hour and ten minutes or so later, we landed.

Pa Lot, a venerable pastor, parliamentarian and politician of the First Republic, spoke about the menace of the Fulani herdsmen in jocular terms, when I met him some decades ago in Jos. He was well into his 80s himself. He narrated how the herdsmen would arrive unannounced at a particular time of the year and would graze their cattle peacefully for a period of time, Then they would depart for greener pastures without any notice with only a part of the herd, leaving an appreciable number with only a few herdsmen in charge.

OVER the past decade…cattle rustling has been transformed into a vicious criminal activity…far beyond the low-intensity conflict that had previously defined the relationship between farmers and grazers.

ONE of the most socially significant bills to be introduced by a legislator is now before the Senate. Its proponent is Mr. Ovie Omo-Agege, only about three months old in that conclave of self-inflating legislators who crave the bogus adulation of “distinguished senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” By this bill alone, Omo-Agege has surpassed what older tenants of the Senate, some in their third or fourth terms, can ever hope to achieve besides living large and laundering our stolen moneys in offshore tax havens.

MEDIA accounts are often very graphic, and validate their claims by including statements ascribed to eye-witnesses and descriptions of the reactions of community leaders, security commanders or government officials.