6th January 2026
AN OPEN LETTER THAT OPENED WITH NOTHING BUT SHAMELESS LIES
There are propaganda efforts, and then there are propaganda efforts so clumsy they function as public comedy. The so-called “open letter” purportedly written by Ibrahim Yusuf Babayo, Chairman of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), on 4th January 2026 to President Tinubu falls squarely into the second category, a document so drenched in selective memory, emotional inflation, and theatrical victimhood that it accidentally exposes the very contradictions it tries to hide. It is less a plea for peace and more a performance art piece titled “How to Trespass, Then Cry on Official Letterhead.”
The letter tries very hard to sound statesmanlike, listing figures, dates, and locations with bureaucratic seriousness while carefully avoiding the one detail that matters most, why these incidents keep happening in the same way, in the same places, over and over again. It reads like a police report written by a suspect who insists on narrating only the part where the handcuffs went on.
What makes it truly pathetic is the assumption that Nigerians have no memory, no internet access, and no lived experience. That somehow a long list of cattle losses, repeated endlessly, will erase decades of documented farm destruction, displacement, and recorded admissions of wrongdoing. This is lazy propaganda, not advocacy, relying on volume instead of truth.
And perhaps the most insulting part is the belief that this recycled script still works. That after videos, testimonies, court cases, and graves, Nigerians will suddenly forget cause and effect because a letter says “we seek peace.” At this point, the letter does not persuade, it exposes. And that exposure is why it is being laughed at.
AT THIS POINT, IT IS THE CONFIDENCE OF TRESPASS TALKING
Nigerians are no longer shocked by conflict. We are shocked by the audacity of the complaints. The kind of boldness that walks into someone’s ancestral farmland, turns cassava into cattle feed, records it, uploads it, and then writes an “open letter” demanding sympathy. It is not the letter that is stunning, it is the belief that everyone else is blind, forgetful, or stupid.
Because imagine the logic. Your cows enter farms they do not own, eat crops they did not plant, destroy livelihoods they did not build, and the headline emergency is that the cows are unhappy. That is like robbing a bakery, choking on the bread, and suing the baker for indigestion. The audacity is almost academic and should be studied in earnest.
What makes it comedic is the insistence that this is all happening “unprovoked.” As though farms leap into cows’ mouths uninvited. As though ancestral lands suddenly developed legs and chased grazing cattle. At some point, the word “attack” begins to sound like a creative writing exercise.
Nigerians, especially me, are laughing now. Not because destruction is funny, but because the attempt to rewrite cause and effect in broad daylight is. The country has moved past confusion into mockery, because when logic is abused this openly, satire becomes the only reasonable response.
Which is why I wrote this reply, because I simply cannot take this group of immigrants seriously. It must also be noted they are the only group of immigrants that are a problem to everyone in this country and most of West Africa.
WHEN COWS BECOME CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYERS
There is a special genre of argument that suggests livestock now have constitutional roaming rights superior to human beings. According to this logic, cows may enter any land, at any time, regardless of ownership, consent, or history, and any resistance is framed as oppression. It is a fascinating legal theory, mostly because it exists nowhere outside press statements and Fulani logic.
Freedom of movement does not mean forced association. No Nigerian law, no international treaty, no divine revelation says communities must host anyone who arrives uninvited with animals. Consent is not optional, and hospitality is not compulsory. Coexistence does not mean surrender.
The most absurd part is the surprise. Shock that communities defend their farms. Shock that poisoned grass appears where crops were repeatedly destroyed. Shock that people react when their survival is threatened. This is not mystery, it is consequence. Even cows understand boundaries better than some arguments do.
And let us be blunt. Cows do not eat poison on highways or grazing reserves. They encounter poison when they are where they should not be, on farms. This is not hatred. It is geography. When trespass ends, so do many of these tragedies.
The silence around this obvious fact is deafening.
THE MAGIC TRICK OF VICTIMHOOD WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY
One of the more impressive feats in the letter is the ability to list losses endlessly while skipping the part about how conflicts start. Cattle numbers are counted meticulously. Genocide, farm losses, human deaths, displaced families, conveniently vague or invisible. It is a magic trick. Focus the camera on one side long enough and hope the audience forgets the other exists.
What Nigerians have not forgotten, however, are the videos. The proud declarations. The statements about killing infidels, feeding cattle on infidel farms, harvesting crops that are not theirs, destroying what remains. Once those clips circulated and many others like it, the national mood shifted from debate to disbelief. You cannot film the offense and then plead innocence.
Even more theatrical is the complaint about exclusion from local security outfits. There is no country where known terrorist elements are incorporated into the infrastructure, well maybe in Nigeria and pro-jihadist states, but in rational countries where the system actually works, it just does not happen.
Community policing is built on trust. Trust is built on respect for land, laws, and people. If a community feels threatened, they do not respond by handing weapons to the source of fear and hoping for the best. That is not discrimination, that is survival instinct. Victimhood without accountability is not advocacy, it is performance. Nigerians have watched this play before. Same script, same omissions, same demand for sympathy without reform.
The audience is no longer applauding.
COEXISTENCE IS NOT A HOSTAGE SITUATION
The blame for the Fulani audacity for calls of coexistence lies in the armed forces. If the GOC in Plateau State opens his mouth without shame and says the military cannot handle the problem, and dialogue for peace be explored, implying communities must live with immigrant terrorists that attack them, then it is no wonder MACBAN feels empowered to make shameless statements.
The purported peaceful coexistence keeps being mentioned, but never practiced. Many native communities have reportedly been attacked when they let their guard down immediately after these sham peace meetings, sometimes organized by the military. Coexistence requires rule of law. It requires recognizing that immigrant nomadic systems from centuries ago cannot override settled communities in a modern state made of native ancestral land.
What is being demanded instead is endurance. That natives must suffer so one immigrant foreign lifestyle remains untouched, surrendering rights to life and property to satiate the Fulani whims.
No group is entitled to freeze time while everyone else pays the price. Farmers adapt. Cities expand. Borders solidify. Economies evolve. Herding cannot be the sole exception that refuses regulation, boundaries, or modernization, while demanding state protection when things go wrong.
The irony is that real solutions exist. Justice, rule of law, ranching, compensation frameworks, enforcement of boundaries, punishment of trespass. And those to the Fulani are far less appealing than writing letters that blame everyone else for their decadent and evil nature which is clearly aimed at modern-day imperialism.
So the cycle continues. Genocide, trespass, destruction, retaliation, letter-writing. And each time, the argument grows weaker, the patience shorter, and the public more openly dismissive.
CONCLUSION
WHAT THE ISSUE ACTUALLY IS
This is not about hatred. It is not about denying anyone humanity. It is about indigeneship, consent, land, rule of law, justice, and accountability.
Farms are not grazing reserves.
Ancestral land is not public property.
Coexistence cannot be enforced by pressure or guilt.
Unwilling natives cannot be forced to accommodate dangerous immigrants with terrorist tendencies.
Immigrants with terrorist tendencies that threaten the peace and safety of the entire country must be labeled as such and swiftly prosecuted and deported.
Sympathy is not automatic, it follows responsibility.
Until genocide is quelled, until illegal grabbing of property is punished, until displacement of people from their ancestral land is fought against by all tiers of government, until trespass is addressed honestly, until Fulani destructive effect on Nigeria is acknowledged instead of edited out, and until adaptation replaces entitlement, no open letter will work.
Nigerians are not confused. They are simply done pretending that obvious causes do not exist.
And one final fact that cuts through all the noise. Cows do not eat poison when they stay off other people’s farms. That is not propaganda. That is reality, stubborn, unromantic, and immune to press releases and useless propaganda peddling open letters.
