For as long as one could recall, the cool valleys of hilly Plateau state gave and sustained all life-forms. Seasonal rivulets enabled a lot of farm activity that produced specialties like acha, the Irish potato, and atli edible oil. The near temperate temperature of the Plateau used to bring tourists from far and near, including European Christian missionaries. This has stopped. Today, inter-communal tensions and violence have turned those valleys into valleys of death. You never can tell when and where this evil stalker will take you.
On December 24, the eve of Christmas, gunmen attacked some 20 rural communities for hours nonstop. On Monday, shouts of hallelujah were replaced by reports of 165 people confirmed dead and many more missing. Residents of those communities in Barkin Ladi and Bokkos local council areas said the attackers took their time “killing, maiming and looting.” Plateau state governor Caleb Mutfwang said the federal government lacked the “political will” to deal decisively with “marauding terrorists” in the state. According to him, gunmen had taken over schools in Barkin Ladi for five years, yet they had not been dislodged. “We must stop this carnage,” the governor said but not with the “reactionary strategy” used by security forces. “As I am talking to you, in Barkin-Ladi Local Government, schools have been occupied by these terrorists for some years now. Not less than 64 communities have been displaced and lands have been taken over by these marauding terrorists.”
In his reaction to the latest mass slaughter in Plateau, the Sultan Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar 111, condemned the killings, but warned against people suggesting they were religious. And they mustn’t be politicized either. The leader of Nigerian Muslims said, “We’re all in one big country where we have poverty. Yes, Muslims, Christians, and even people who don’t have religion, go to the same market, they buy the same foodstuffs, they enter the same vehicles, pay the same fares, so it is not the issue of religion. Let’s not say that anybody is planning this against Christians or against Muslims. No, it is the issue of leadership.” He mentioned intelligence failure, specifically, saying for this reason “bandits and terrorists are always a step ahead” of security agents. That was also why they “could not avert this heinous crime that led to the death of over 100 people.” The Sultan asked the government to step up the fight against crime. “We always condemn such things but after condemning such activities by these bandits and criminals, what are the roles of the governments which are supposed to protect life and property?” he asked.
“Why can’t we be proactive and stop such attacks before they happen? What (has) happened to our intelligence-gathering mechanism? Can anybody tell me that nobody knew that such attacks were coming? Have we lost our sense of gathering information to avert such heinous crimes? We must ask our governments to up their game because these bandits are always a step ahead.” He said, “Things are not right and when things are not right, anything can happen.” And he asked Nigerians to “put pressure on our leaders to do the right thing.”
President Bola Tinubu, expectedly, expressed disgust over the killings in Plateau and he ordered the security agencies to ensure”these envoys of death, pain and sorrow (do not) escape justice.” But the very military that can and should do this is, itself, incapacitated. Or so it appears. There is a military “Operation Safe Haven” that is supposed to keep the state safe but was unable to prevent last week’s murders. Its leader admitted they received distress calls from the communities being attacked but were hampered by “difficult terrain.” Haba! Ain’t they trained to navigate every kind of terrain in a crisis situation? They did it during the civil war. What terrain could be more difficult than Biafra? Prior to Plateau, the military acted quickly on faulty intelligence to bomb and kill hundreds in Tudun Biri in Kaduna State. In Plateau, the intelligence was perfect, but the military would not move to prevent a massacre. The excuse is the terrain!
Governor Mutfwang blamed a “lack of political will” on the part of the federal government, which has sole control of the military and police, to do the needful. Schools, he said, have been overrun and occupied by terrorists for upward of five years, yet nothing has been done to dislodge, arrest and prosecute them. This failure has emboldened the criminals. Their number has not only increased but also their reach. Two days after Christmas, a community received a letter threatening an imminent attack.
The Sultan Sokoto said Nigerians should put pressure on their leaders to “do the right thing.” What kind of pressure and what is the right thing, he didn’t say. What pressure can be put on a military that promised a people a safe haven but couldn’t provide one? Just about the same time that gunmen were wreaking havoc in Plateau, the military high command was making merry over newly promoted officers. The headquarters of 3 Armoured Division of the Nigerian Army is in Jos, the Plateau capital and there is an Air Force Base at Heipang International Airport near Jos. Yet neither deemed it expedient to save hapless and helpless villagers from killer squads President Tinubu calls “envoys of death”. There has arisen, from that, a conspiracy theory, alleging the attackers received “encouragement” from some senior military officers. Questions have been asked also regarding how the attackers got the military assault rifles they used.
The Sultan Sokoto asked a fundamental question. We always condemn killings whenever and wherever they occur. After that what? Nothing.
