Addressing the criminals aspects of communal violence

The report details how victims, including women and children, were “hacked to death, burned alive or shot simply based on their ethnic or religious identity”. The 146-page report, “Leave Everything to God: Accountability for Inter-Communal Violence in Plateau and Kaduna States, Nigeria’, includes a photo essay, and is based on interviews with more than 180 […]

The report details how victims, including women and children, were “hacked to death, burned alive or shot simply based on their ethnic or religious identity”.
The 146-page report, “Leave Everything to God: Accountability for Inter-Communal Violence in Plateau and Kaduna States, Nigeria’, includes a photo essay, and is based on interviews with more than 180 witnesses and victims. Among them are police investigators, prosecutors and researchers.   
The report notes that Plateau State, perhaps more than any other, has suffered over a decade of recurring episodes of communal violence which have left thousands of Christians and Muslims dead. Sectarian clashes in Jos in 2010 sparked the killing of Muslims; a counter-offensive targeted Christians mostly from the Berom ethnic group.
A recurring factor in the cycle of violence has been the non-prosecution of offenders.  This particular failing in law enforcement fuels feelings of loss and desire for revenge.
The report notes that although witnesses came forward to tell their stories and identified the attackers in cases of violence, the authorities apparently took no action.  
According to federal and state prosecutors, not a single suspect was prosecuted for the April 2011 killings in Kaduna state. In April 2011, postelection violence in the North degenerated into sectarian violence. In the northern part of Kaduna state, the conflict took on sectarian character, with Christians and their properties being the target of attack. When the violence spread to the southern part of Kaduna state, the role was reversed, with Muslims targeted in reprisal attacks.
The typical response by law enforcement agencies to communal violence has been to arrest people found around the scenes of crimes and dump them at detention centres, often lumping them into a single cell without any statement or report from arresting officers. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for prosecutors to link suspects to any specific crimes.
Getting the facts to enable prosecution is also complicated because community and religious leaders often rally behind members of their own groups suspected or implicated in crimes, and putting pressure on higher authorities to drop charges. But this should not be an excuse for security officers and other law enforcement agents to shirk their responsibility to the state to maintain law and order.  
Perhaps the greatest challenge in the efforts to curb violence is the mistaken notion on the part of government to treat mass killings as a political issue rather than addressing their underlying criminal nature. As the HRW notes, commissions of inquiry were set up to investigate violent crises but their recommendations were never implemented. Such inertia only reinforces impunity.
The government should begin to buck that unhelpful trend by ensuring that the criminal nature of every act of violence is investigated and addressed, and the offenders are identified, prosecuted and punished according to law.  Law-abiding members of the public should also exercise their civil responsibility to expose crimes and criminals by promptly reporting cases to law enforcement agencies. The consequences of harbouring criminals and condoning criminal acts are harmful to such individuals in the long run and the larger society suffers the fallouts from them.