The cold-blooded killing of fifty-two persons is not something that should be “condemned” in the greatest possible terms in any country in the world; it has the potential to and should bring catastrophic changes to the system. This shift is long overdue in Nigeria.
In only a few weeks, Plateau State has seen not one, but two mass killings: 48 two weeks ago in Bassa, and 42 this time in the Bokkos villages of Zikke and Kimakpa. Three hundred years have passed since the 2023 Christmas Day massacre. If totaled, the statistics over the past 24 years since Plateau State’s violence started in 2001 would be astounding, with estimations in the hundreds. Our indifference to the frequent death toll we have been suffering in the state is evident in the fact that we lack a definite statistic. We now have to acknowledge the harsh reality that nobody who should care does.
If justice had been done and been seen to be done after the killings of September 7, 2001, perhaps Plateau would not have become the killing field it is today. A more serious crime is invited when justice is not served for a lesser one. If one were to ask the murderers, they would most likely claim retaliation for an injustice done to them—an injustice the justice system failed to address.
Retaliation for an injustice done to them is the rationale for villagers lynching a random traveler or striking down a herdsman and corraling his livestock. We have so succeeded in entangling ourselves in a cycle of hatred, bloodshed, and savage murders.
We have become experts in publicly denouncing these “heinous acts,” as our presidents have referred to them throughout the years, but we have never been experts at putting an end to them. We never really bothered to stop them, it seems. Obasanjo’s 2004 proclamation of a state of emergency in the state was our most drastic move, but it was not created with any long-term objectives in mind. It failed to meet any long-term goals.
Not a single arrest has been made, and the masterminds of these attacks, whether they are against Christians or Muslims, have not been discovered despite hundreds of orders for the capture of “the perpetrators of these evil acts.” There hasn’t been a significant manhunt for the murderers of the most recent victims in the wake of these crimes. These terrorists are being encouraged to repeat their crimes by the lack of repercussions.
Our government and security operatives have spent almost a generation twiddling their thumbs while murderers have continued to perfect their genocidal acts. We have kept trying to use the same methods—mounting checkpoints, setting up isolated military bases—to stop the madness. What we are effectively doing is sitting and waiting and “showing face.” Yet time and again, we have seen how these strategies have failed in unacceptable ways—because if the massacre of 52 people without a single arrest is not a massive security failure, then what is? Over the years, we have seen how easy it is for the killers to circumvent these stationed soldiers and take hours leisurely killing off communities.
While the knee-jerk reaction is to blame the military for these lapses, the reality is that the problem is more comprehensive. First, the military was not designed to function as a vigilante group. Despite our best efforts over two decades to have them function as such, we must realise that the assignment has failed because policing communities is not the function of the military but of the police.
Our police force has been handicapped for decades, largely by the intervention of the military in the political space (as I argued in my May 13, 2021, article titled “The military is paying today for undermining the police yesterday.” Google it if you wish.) Apart from the chronic shortage of professionalism in the police force and lack of equipment, it is simply baffling that in the decades of civil violence we have been experiencing, the government has not deemed it fit to expand the police force and train them to handle this situation. How is it possible that we still have between 300,000 and 400,000 police officers to secure the country’s 250 million population across 923,769 square kilometres?
What the government should have done is expand the police force by recruiting widely, funding them, and training them to secure the population and communities, thereby allowing the military to focus on special operations to take out terrorist cells and criminal gangs before, not after, they could strike. The approach must be well-coordinated and proactive.
These are all within the purview of the federal government, which must go beyond the usual rhetoric that will soon be forgotten once the media attention turns to the next flavour-of-the-week news item.
For its part, the state government must be genuinely committed to peaceful coexistence in the state with law-abiding citizens. The discourse that a succession of governments in the state has advanced has deepened the divisions among the people and conferred a second-class status on some of the populace; such narratives must change. Those who live in the state within the ambit of the law should be treated with fairness and should be afforded justice whenever transgressions are made against them. The occasional murder of certain communities or individuals must not be aided and abetted because they are not indigenes, only for the government to cry out when massacres like these are perpetrated as retaliation.
Having said this, we must categorically call out the Fulani militia and the leadership of the Fulani clan. The Miyetti Allah has, over the years, argued that people of Fulani stock have been attacked and killed and their cattle rustled, inferring that the killings, such as those in Bassa and Bokkos, are retaliations. I say inferred because they have never directly stated this.
Rhetoric aside, Nigeria must address the Fulani quandary. It makes no sense that the herders are involved in most of the violence happening in various parts of the country, from the farmers and herders conflict in the North Central to banditry and kidnappings in the North West and other regions. Each time, the justification that Miyetti gives for these transgressions is that the Fulani and their cattle are sacrosanct.
While every tribe should be free to enjoy the rights provided for them in the constitution, such as the right to life, the right to free movement, and the right to reside in any part of the country, these rights must be exercised within the law. The Fulani way of life, we must say, is no longer compatible with the realities of today. The system of indiscriminate grazing on people’s farmlands, which is sometimes done with absolute malice, is no longer tenable.
Something needs to change, and the crimes that have developed to defend this way of life—crimes that have now evolved into kidnapping, bartering, and killing people like cattle—need to be stopped. Despite their value, human lives and livelihoods shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of cattle. The government must take action to stop disputes between farmers and herders and ethnic militia atrocities if Miyetti does not aggressively strive to stop the Fulani militia and robbers from terrorizing the nation.
Finding the criminals and holding them accountable must be the first step in any action the government takes. President Tinubu must have the guts to take drastic steps to put an end to the violence, and many things need to change. It’s sufficient. Now is the moment to take action if anyone genuinely cares about Plateau and the lives of defenseless Nigerians everywhere.
