There should be no hiding place for the killers in the search for peace
Mindless murderers, in an orgy of barbaric bloodletting, attacked several communities across two Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Plateau State, in the North-Central region of Nigeria, on Christmas Eve. At the end of an obviously well-planned savage onslaught, said to have lasted three hours, and which saw no less than 20 villages under sustained attack, large numbers of innocent Nigerians, including children, women and the elderly, had their lives snuffed out.
While the Police Command in Plateau State reported that 96 persons were killed and hundreds injured, the chairmen of the two Local Government Areas where the carnage took place, namely Bokkos and Barkin-Ladi LGAs, claimed that 155 people were killed and no less than one thousand injured. Going by the police report, 221 houses and several vehicles as well as motorcycles were burnt by the invaders. To underscore the seriousness of the situation, residents of the affected villages were said to have combed the bushes several hours after the violence had abated, and discovered bodies of those killed by the assailants while trying to escape.
To destroy lives and disrupt harmonious communal living on such a scale in a territory not known to be formally at war is indicative of an alarming degree of degradation and erosion of the power, authority and coercive potency of the state. It is difficult to fathom how these criminal elements could have operated for such a considerable length of time and across such a broad expanse of space without any discernible countervailing response by the country’s myriad security agencies to safeguard lives and property of endangered citizens.
Here we saw, once again, a glaring failure of the Nigerian state to perform a fundamental duty for which citizens willingly submit themselves to its authority – to create the necessary conditions for the latter to pursue their legitimate business without fear of harm.
That those who perpetrated this dastardly act could so easily plan and actualise their satanic objectives yet again is particularly amazing because this is the umpteenth time we are witnessing this kind of sordid, disconcerting mass murder. Could it then be that the relevant security agencies learnt nothing from past occurrences, such that they could not have put in place effective measures to check and neutralise the latest occurrence?
This exposes once more the vulnerable underbelly and weakest link in Nigeria’s ongoing efforts to check assorted terrorist crimes and enhance security – the lack of adequate infrastructure, personnel and skills to gather, analyse and utilise intelligence. If this loophole is plugged, it will become much more difficult for terrorists and insurgents to plan the kind of large-scale bloody operation just witnessed in Plateau State, without the enterprise being nipped in the bud before actualisation.
We recall that just in May this year, gunmen stormed the Mangu area of Plateau State, attacking and burning several houses with initial fatalities estimated at over 20, including women and children. The death toll resulting from this savagery was later put at over 60 by the local authorities. So frequent have these gruesome incidents become in a once famously serene and scenic Plateau State that both residents of the violence-prone areas of the state and those of other parts of the country have become largely desensitised to the scale of atrocities, the statistics of fatalities or the degree of cruelty.
Over the last two decades, the conflicts mainly between nomadic ethnic Fulani herders and indigenous farmers from such ethnic groups as the Berom, Anaguta and Afizeke ethnic groups have become almost routine and seemingly normal in Plateau. At times, the conflict is over the use of scarce land for grazing or farming. Sometimes, the grievances have to do with proprietary rights by contending groups over space to dwell in and earn a living. The clashes often take the shape of indigenes up in arms against non- indigenes, and the cost in human lives and erosion of civilised values has been colossal.
In 2001, for instance, no less than 1000 persons were believed to have been killed in Jos and its environs in the course of these ethno-religious conflagrations. At least 700 persons were estimated to have been killed in communal clashes in Yelwa, southern Plateau State, in 2004. Again, in January 2010, several scores of people were reportedly killed in sectarian clashes in and around Jos, with nearly 150 Muslims reportedly murdered in the nearby town of Kan Karama. And in December 2010, Christmas Eve explosions in two Christian neighbourhoods in Jos, followed by several days of sectarian violence, reportedly left at least 107 persons dead.
Read Also: Nigeria’s economy will witness boom in 2024, Presidency assures
It is inexcusable that this seeming vicious cycle of violence has been allowed to persist as if it is inevitable and no enduring solution can be found. The governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, has decried what he described as the “lack of political will” by relevant authorities over the years to flush out terrorists from the state. He particularly lamented a situation in which arrests are hardly ever made by security agents to ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes are brought to justice.
Speaking on national television, he said: “In Barkin-Ladi Local Government Area, schools have been occupied by terrorists for some years now. Not less than 64 communities have been displaced and the lands have been taken over by these marauding terrorists.” He added: “People who want land on the Plateau are free to approach the communities, negotiate and settle in those communities. I don’t think people will refuse but when they resort to violence to take over those lands, you will be sure that this is a time bomb because it will reach a time when people react and we are going to have a large-scale conflict.”
We agree that those responsible for these acts must be vigorously pursued, apprehended and made to face the law. This is why President Bola Tinubu’s directive to security agents to fish out the killers, with the promise that when they are found they will not be spared, is appropriate. All those whose hands are tainted by blood must be punished. That is the only path back to sanity.
To his credit, the immediate past governor of the state, Senator Simon Lalong, sought to rise above the fray, transcend the contending factions, and adopt a statesmanlike approach to solving the problem. He developed a template of cooperative stakes of all the major ethnic and religious groups. It provided avenue for grievances to be addressed prior to any bloody outburst. It was a delicate arrangement that held the state together, if imperfectly. But in such an arrangement with improvements is the path to peace.
