This piece is about the marauding Fulani herdsmen who have found highway robbery as a better way of getting good money from the travails of shepherding cattle in mosquito and tsetsefly-infested savannah grasslands.
When they strike by blocking a portion of any of the busy highways in the country, as they often do these days, they send shivers down the spine of their victims. Fulfude, the language of the Fulani, which sounds Greek in the ears of the captives hearing it for the first time in their lives, makes them wonder whether the country is under an invasion by some aliens. Perhaps, it is indeed an invasion by persons who are, strictly speaking, Ghanaians.
It is not an isolated case as many of such instances have been recorded in the past few years on our highways.
It is a major security challenge which we, sometimes for political reasons, prefer were not discussed. Perhaps, that is why we are served as a people, periodic dosages of supposed dwindling crime statistics. Why not? The police must pat each other on their backs if others do not do so for them.
The true picture is that our highways are unsafe, especially after dusk and those who defy the odds and get foolhardy during those wee hours do so at their own risk as they might not live to even regret it.
We are not underrating the efforts of the police in stemming the worrying tide but only attempting to paint the realistic picture of the situation, as it pertains on our roads. Indeed, the security agents are not sleeping but performing their duties even in the face of constraints, we do acknowledge.
We learnt that some commercial drivers somewhere are demanding that they be allowed to bear firearms as they drive along the highways, and this, for us, underscores the importance of the dangers lurking on the inter and intra-regional roads at night.
Many have died and an equal number maimed as a result of these robbers descending upon them on the highways.
We could be under a Fulani piracy of sorts, the kind being perpetrated by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, though in our case, the captors do not ask for ransom but empty our pockets with similar assault weapons- AK 47s.
We find the situation reprehensible. We might have to adopt another means of dealing with the situation. We are aware that armed guards are being assigned vehicles on long journeys and on terrains prone to such attacks by the Fulani pirates.
With limited cops at the disposal of the country, we cannot think of a possibility of extending such a security facility for all vehicles.
The Fulanis, being nomadic, travel freely across West Africa in search of pasture for their cattle but most of them are natives to Niger, Northern Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali.
Most of those engaged in these criminal acts are not Ghanaians; therein lies our worry, a national challenge calling for immediate attention.
It is an affront to our national image and security. We must act fast to arrest it before it becomes our version of the Somali piracy as the Fulanis abandon their cattle and become so daring on our highways to the extent of sometimes even raping married women.