PLATEAU STATE AND ITS ENDLESS CARNAGE

The crisis on the Plateau leaves a trail of awkward questions

After a relative period of calm, Plateau State has once again relapsed into full-scale violence. There have also been fresh waves of violence in Kaduna, Taraba, Nasarawa, Niger States, and indeed Benue, and others where many innocent people were killed in cold blood, triggering fears of rising insecurity, amid disruption of lives. In Kaduna for instance, 13 persons were shot dead and many others abducted when gunmen attacked a wedding ceremony at Kahir, a village in Kagarko local government area.

In Jos, President Bola Tinubu pledged to deploy a network of artificial intelligence-enabled cameras to help  law enforcement agencies break the pervasive “shackles of violence” in the area. The president spoke while on a condolence visit to the bereaved families in the wake of the Palm Sunday attack in Angwan Rukuba, Jos North local council, where dozens of innocent people were murdered. And in what is increasingly becoming a ritual, Tinubu also directed the security chiefs, many of whom were present in Jos, to unearth and apprehend those responsible for the killings.

In the Palm Sunday violence in Jos, gunmen who rode on motorbikes reportedly opened fire indiscriminately on residents who were going about their routine duties in the early evening. Students were also caught in the bloody incident, prompting some neighbouring states to hurriedly evacuate their wards from the University of Jos for safety. Particularly haunting was a viral video of a woman clutching the bloodied corpse of her son, killed in the attack.

Since 2001, Plateau State has been embroiled in a consistently patterned and ruinous crisis that has claimed thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands of others have also been uprooted from their homes, with some taking refuge in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. Decades after, many are yet to return to their ancestral homes due to continued insecurity. Indeed, former Governor Jonah Jang noted that over 160 communities have been destroyed and occupied forcefully by armed groups.

In the bid to contain the problem, various administrations had set up several panels of inquiries to get to its roots. From the Fiberesima Commission through to Niki Tobi, and others, the causes of the pogrom have been outlined in black and white. But heaps of recommendations towards ending the crisis are gathering dusts in shelves.

No government, as far as we are aware, has been able to summon the courage to tackle the issues involved. Indeed, last week, former Governor Simon Lalong was bold enough to admit that all the past governors, including the current one, know what the problems are. But another former Governor, Jonah Jang, counters that the recent violence had nothing to do with farmer/herder conflicts, while blaming the federal government for the problem. “There have been incidents where suspects linked to these crimes were transferred to Abuja,” said Jang, “only for cases to lose momentum, with little or no accountability.”

Community elders as well as political and religious leaders who ordinarily should help in maintaining the peace are most often the ones who lead the rhetoric of hate that in turn ignites the spiral of violence. A major cause of the violence and aggravated tension in Plateau State and several other theatres across the country is over access to land, especially between nomads and peasant farmers. As we have stated repeatedly, the solution is to address headlong the perennial problem of grazing rights. The pastoral lifestyle as an aspect of our inherited culture has become a national security challenge and is no longer tenable.  

 We welcome the need to install intelligent cameras to enhance security on the Plateau and beyond, in addition to putting more boots on the ground. However, conscious effort must be made to address decisively issues of land and related ones.