Plateau’s circle of ‘endless’ violence

One hundred and thirty five people lost their lives while over 12, 000 were displaced as a result of losing 584 houses to attacks in four local government areas of Plateau State between March 19 and now, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), North Central Zone.The affected local government areas are  Wase, Bokkos, […]

One hundred and thirty five people lost their lives while over 12, 000 were displaced as a result of losing 584 houses to attacks in four local government areas of Plateau State between March 19 and now, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), North Central Zone.
The affected local government areas are  Wase, Bokkos, Riyom, and Barkin-Ladi, the zone said in a report signed   in Jos by its Public Relations Officer Audu Yohanna.
“Following the report received from the Plateau State Emergency Management Agency (PSEMA) on communal crisis/violent attack experienced in some parts of Plateau State leading to loss of lives and causing damage to property worth several millions of naira, a joint team comprising of NEMA officials, PSEMA, Nigerian Red Cross Society, Nigerian Police Force  and NSCDC embarked on an on-the-spot assessment of the affected Local Government Areas with a view to determining the extent of damages.”
The report said the latest rounds of communal clashes on which the report is based started “between the Fulani herdsmen and Tarok” and caused serious destruction of lives,   farmlands, residential houses  and places of worships in Wase on March 19, and that similar incidents occurred in the other LGAs rapidly afterwards and followed similar trends.
On the average, at least five deaths were recorded per day within the last 24 days in what have sadly become traditional flashpoints of Plateau State. Bokkos, which was before now not known for violence, was also affected this time around, sending fears across the state.
For the record, two people were gunned down in the early hours of Sunday, March 17, 2013 in Wase, returning tension to a place that faced much violence only a little over two months earlier, on  January 23, when the finding of the dead body of one person worked up a mob that killed nine others.
On March 20, what was regarded as a continuation of the March 17 killing in Wase was recorded in Mavo, a village in   Wase Local Government Area. A source at the time told a sister publication of Thursday March 21 that “I saw three corpses, two adults and a child and three thatched houses that were burnt down.”
As evident in that story, attackers have typically gone beyond taking lives to include destruction of property.
On March 22, 10 travellers, said to be residents of Yelwa Shendam in   Shendam LGA on their way to a market in neighbouring Taraba State, were waylaid in a community called Walu in   Langtang LGA by people who, applying guns and machetes, snuffed the lives out of the traders who were seven men and three women. It was the first time in many years when Yelwa Shendam which became notorious in 2004 for the state of emergency clamped on the entire state because of a multiplicity of mayhem in parts of the state that culminated in the killing of hundreds of people in Yelwa in May of that year.
Ganawuri, a community in Riyom LGA not before known for violence, became an attack zone on March 26 when 18 people were felled in two nearby villages: Da Jak and Atakar, which lie close to neighbouring Kaduna State. No less a person than Riyom LGA chairman, Engr Sam Audu, testified to the bloodshed. He said  “the villagers were sacked, their homes set ablaze and the people had to run to their kinsmen in Kaduna State.”
Bokkos, which had been one of the most peaceful LGAs in Plateau State, jumped onto the front pages on March 29 following attacks the previous day in two villages outside the council headquarters. 24 people died in what were believed to be first an offensive attack on natives of the affected two villages and a reprisal attack on a Fulani by angry natives carrying vengeance on the nearest Fulani community because the ‘strangers’ who attacked the two villages were alleged to be Fulani.
Now, the Plateau crisis as all forms of aggression around the state are collectively known, comes in two variants: the Jos crisis, and crises in the rest of the state. While the Jos crisis is usually a struggle for Jos between the trio of Berom, Anaguta, and Afizere on the one hand and the huge Hausa-speaking populace on the other hand; the crises around some other parts of the state are frequently a struggle for space between nomadic Fulani and the native communities that the nomads traverse.
The Bokkos attacks of March 28 were followed quickly the next day in adjoining Barkin-Ladi LGA. Chairman of the council, Dr Emanuel Loman said the same people who attacked Bokkos were the ones who descended on Ratas as they made their way out of Bokkos. Nine people lost their lives to the Ratas violence.
April 6 was to be the day of a fresh round of bloody conflict in Wase from where it was reported that 15 people died when 13 of some armed men who attempted to invade Wase town were killed and the others repelled after they had killed two Wase residents. The attackers were said to be Tarok militia from Zango, a village within the Wase LGA. Describing part of what happened, a Wase youth leader, Shafi’i Sambo said, “It’s armed Tarok militants that came to attack us. They came around 6am but our youths and vigilante were alert so we were able to chase them back to Zango.”
Until Wase came into the picture in January this year and hostility began to be a Tarok-Fulani tango, the Plateau crisis had essentially been concentrated in Riyom and Barkin-Ladi LGAs which are dominated by the Berom-speaking natives. Now, the spread of hostility to Wase and parts of the bordering twin Lantang North and Langtang South LGAs where the Tarok are dominant; as well as Bokkos which boasts of at least five of the state’s ethnic groups and Ganawuri, the traditional melting pot of the Aten tribe, among others, the nomadic Fulani stock has begun to look like the real aggressor, something which troubles the heart of many Fulani leaders who speak of ‘a grand design to mislabel’ Fulani people.
National Secretary of Miyetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Saleh Bayari recently spoke this way when he said, “With violence spreading to more parts of Plateau State and the Fulani being fingered, there appears to be an orchestrated plan by some people to give the Fulani a bad name, whereas most of these atrocities are perpetuated by criminals who have no link with the Fulani community.”
Still on recent attacks around Plateau State, in what would be a continuation of the Saturday April 6 attacks in Wase town and Zango village, 25 people died in a reportedly Tarok-Fulani face-off on Monday April 8 which took much like the form of the Saturday attacks and counter-attacks
EXTERNAL FORCES
The Chairman of Yelwan Shendam Community Development Association Abdullahi Danbaba Uncle said the recent killing of 10 travellers from Yelwa by alleged Tarok youths was aimed at causing trouble between the people of Yelwa and Langtang.
“We have realised that the crises is externally instigated. We have an understanding to live in peace with the people of Langtang and we in Yelwa have created a peace committee which comprises Pastors, Imams and traditionalists and we have been living peacefully in the last six years.”
Yusuf Suleiman, the Chairman of Muslim/Christian vigilante in Yelwa, also said, “A few days ago men from Kadarko rustled cattle and we went after them with the Battalion Commander and they exchanged fire with them for over an hour. Now our fear is that as we enter the wet season, our people who go to the farms may be attacked.”
Secretary of Barkin-Ladi chapter of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Muhammad Adam Muhammad said the major challenge the Fulani people were facing in the area was threat to their lives and cattle which he said had not been properly reported.
The Ardo of Bokkos, Yakubu Dabo Boro said the remaining Fulani community in Bokkos had met with the Challa people to try and resolve their problems. Boro explained: “You know most of the Fulani people there have left for Kaduna, Tafa and Magama areas but we met on Wednesday and formed a committee together with the Challa people; including Pastors, Imams and youths and we are trying to persuade the Fulani people to come back.”
He added, “The sector seven Commander, A.O Agu has agreed to deploy enough security to our communities to protect us.”
ARMED ROBBERY?
Boro offered a view shared by many who have marvelled at how people who appear to be accommodating neighbours sometimes still appear to go for one another’s throat, the possibility that much of the crisis supposedly between Fulani and neighbours could actually have been the handiwork of armed robbers who frequently cause mischief and make the effect suggest something different.
He however said Fulani people were not happy with the security agents for ‘killing four members of the community unjustly’. He said, “We plan to have meetings with security agents on Saturday (today) and we will tell them to be just in whatever they do. Those four Fulani men were picked from their homes and killed by the security agents unjustly.”
The armed robbery supposition has severally been spoken of in attempts to explain the complexity of the Plateau crisis.
A Tarok from the Kadarko District of the Wase Emirate, Barr Kwamkur Samuel Vondip who accused the media of describing the killings in Wase when violence returned there in January after a long while as a communal clash said it was misleading and harmful to peaceful relationship between the Tarok and their Fulani counterparts in Wase LGA for the media to call the killings a communal conflict.
“We from those parts know that crimes such as stealing and killings have been going on there over time; the latest ones only happened to have come in higher numbers,” he stated, continuing, “in much of this armed banditry, people, sometimes Fulani and Tarok, will come together, do the robbery and share what they get; in which case the desperation to commit crime does not know tribe and does not know religion. Even in the confusion created by the crisis in question, people seize an opportunity to steal. In the speculation among the general public in the manner of ‘Fulani is coming to kill us’, ‘Tarok is coming to kill us’, people run out of their houses and the criminals rush in to steal what the fleeing residents leave behind.”
Speaking on the crisis in Wase also, a Taro traditional ruler, the Ponzhi Kumbwang, Jessey Pyenkwam, told Weekly Trust: “These killers are a mischievous unknown bunch of people, because nobody can say confidently who the killers are.”
He spoke of a need for restraint by especially the mass media: “Much exaggeration has been perpetuated over the crisis, and it does not help the situation. We are preaching peace and it is what will help everybody ultimately.”
A view from a Fulani leader, a Wase LGA official of MACBAN, the assistant secretary, Abdullahi Abubakar, supports that position. Abubakar, said it even if it is obvious that a Tarok man commits killing, it is not a Tarok agenda. He said, “Not all Tarok support what is happening. Many Tarok individuals I know are as bitter about the whole thing as we are.”
PEACE-BUILDING EFFORTS
Efforts to curb the Plateau crisis have been as fruitless as they have been ample. At community level, countless peace meetings usually involving traditional rulers and leaders of groups believed to be key to peacemaking are held frequently, but right while some of such meetings are being held, naturally to head off violence, violence would come calling and become the reason why such meetings would disperse prematurely and every peacemaker is returned to square zero while the usually faceless trouble makers perpetuate their trouble.
Special Task Force (STF), comprising members of the military and paramilitary security agencies – the three arms of the military, the Police and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) – very often find itself in the middle of angry groups, having to defend itself from the charge of complicity in given conflicts.
Only last Sunday, making reference to the March 28 attacks in Bokkos, the Plateau chapter of MACBAN wrote a petition to the leadership of the Nigeria Police and the STF, both of which share the responsibility of keeping Plateau safe, accusing members of the two federal government security agencies of helping Bokkos people against the Fulani.
A character of the Plateau crisis that suggests elitist involvement is the sophistication of some of the attacks, the superiority of weapons, and the expertise with which they are handled. No less a person than STF Commander, Major General Henry Ayoola has had occasions to marvel at the intelligence of some of the attackers.