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Nok, Jos the Tafawa Belewa’s Tomb (IV) By Patrick Naagbanton

September 8, 2014

We are in a period when any incident is blamed on Boko Haram. It happened during the armed insurgence in the Niger Delta region, southern Nigeria from early 2006 to late 2008. Every single violent incident in any part of the region then was blamed on the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), even when the group was not responsible, I explained to him.

Continued from Nok, Jos the Tafawa Belewa’s Tomb (III)

After her speech, silence descended on the car, except the sound of the car’s tire dancing from one bad spot to another on the Turu-Von-Mayam Road.

We passed Vom, Kaduna Vom (“K-Vom”) and Angundai areas, and headed northwest to avoid the traffic jam on Von Bukuru Road due to ongoing construction work.

The rain started again as we journeyed towards the Jos metropolis. The Berom people are the inhabitants of the Jos South LGA, but there are other groups such as the Igbos of southeastern Nigeria, the Idoma tribe of Benue State which inhabits the area south of the river Benue, the Hausas, and others. 

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Jos-Akwanga Road, North-central Nigeria

We passed by the Nigerian College of Accountancy on the right. Ahead were few houses along the road and small pieces of rocks and farmlands. We passed a military checkpoint which had few metal drums filled with sand and painted in Nigerian army colours with several inscriptions.

The Plateau rain was no longer falling heavily as we witnessed before, it had reduced. There were a lot of children with their parents who covered themselves with white polythene, to protect themselves from rain drops and cold walking slowly along the road. There were also several sack bags filled to the brim with several roots of Irish potatoes and carrots. There were trucks and vehicles parked too, buying them at wholesale prices and later to sell them at retail prices in big cities to mostly middle class consumers.

After them was another military checkpoint with armed soldiers.

After the checkpoint, were some houses and rocks on both sides of the road. We diverted northwards to the Mayangoro area on Rukuba Road and later headed eastwards. The Rukuba Road enters the Jos Township.  Jos south and Jos north LGA form what is today referred to as the Jos Township. Plateau State has two government houses – one located in the Tundu Wada area in Jos North LGA and another in Rayfield in Jos South LGA.

We continued until we entered the Gada Biu area, where in December 2010 deadly explosions rocked the area. The attractive lady got a call on her phone. I heard her calling somebody “my sweet” repeatedly—the same name she was calling me, narrating why the journey took longer time. After the call, I turned to her and said, ‘I am jealous ooooo’. She threw her normal romantic smile at me again, and didn’t say anything.  We have left Jos South LGA into the Jos North LGA. We got to the Plateau Riders Motor Park about two minutes before 2.00 p.m. 

I felt the same air of tension and fear which I saw at Jabi Motor Park in the Utako district of Abuja. Around the park area were scores of heavily armed soldiers, operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS) also called State Security Services (SSS), hovering around the park area like predators looking for stubborn preys. The car stopped and one after another left and bidding farewell to one another.

The lady refused to bid me goodbye or cast her usual soothing smiles. She pretended as if she has not seen somebody like me before. Her attention was a tall man as tall an electric pole who stood by the side of a dark-coloured brand new Prado jeep parked closer to our car. The driver came out of his seat, rushed to my side and opened the door for me. He stood straight in front of me, forcing out his chest like soldier saluting a superior officer, to give me a military salute. But I stopped him and “warned” him that I am not a military person. I didn’t want the security operatives around to arrest me for impersonation.

The weather over the park was the typical Plateau State weather. It was warm-no rain or sun. I hung my black bag on my left side of my shoulder and walked speedily out of the park, throwing my eyes in all directions. Outside the park, as I was getting out, a young operative of the DSS with his hands holding his new Tavor, a short, dark, semi-automatic American gun. He was watching me when I noticed it, I reduced my fast steps. Several thoughts ran in my head. I wanted to walk to the Eagle Valley Royal Hotel where one of my colleagues in the town had arranged for me to spend the night, but had to hire a commercial tricycle (“Keke NAPEP”) to take me to the hotel. I was told the day before, the security officials in the city were raiding every corner to chase away hawkers and that generated some bits of tension. Can street hawking stop in Jos or any other city of Nigeria in spite of the insecurity situation?

The hotel is located close to the popular Charcoal Market along the Tafawa Belewa Street.

The workers at the hotel were quite polite and cheerful, like the Plateau Riders driver I travelled with. I found that quite different from a lot of hotels I have stayed in several cities, mostly in southern Nigeria. The hotel charged me seven thousand five hundred and ninety naira (about forty eight dollars) for a night, for a relatively clean and large room. I had my bath, fixed my media gadgets under my shirt and trousers and headed for a nearby restaurant. I ate vegetable soup with tilapia pepper soup and wheat flour.

After that I walked back to my hotel to ease digestion of the heavy meal, and took a rest for an hour before moving around Jos city again with the colleague.

Jos North LGA’s earliest dwellers were the Afizere, Berom, and the Anagutas. When I heard the name, “Afizere”, the first thing that came to my mind was the name, “Afiesere”, a corruption of the word “Afenosuele,” the name of a town of Urhobo ethnic group.

Urhobo is one of the major groups who occupy mainly the central part of Delta State (western Niger Delta) in southern Nigeria. The Urhobos’ Afiesere is located in the Ughelli North LGA. Some Jos historians told me that the Urhobos were the first batch of settlers to have arrived Jos before the British colonization which came with the mining of iron ore, tin, etcetera. And that other groups like Hausa, Fulani, Igbos, Yoruba and others came into Jos when mining actually began. Some of the settler groups had lived over 100 years in Jos, and had found a home and increased in population and expanded to occupy large land spaces.

Years of senseless killings had thrown a blanket of fear and tension over once a “home of peace and tourism”. I visited Congo Russia; a neighbourhood dominated by the Hausa and Fulani groups which on September 7, 2000, was attacked. A young Christian girl wanted to walk through, but was attacked by Muslims who were gathering for their usual Friday Juma’at prayers. The girl went back and reported to her own people and there was a fight back. That triggered a major confrontation.

We also visited the Terminus Market located at the back of the Ahmadu Bello Way, where in same year of the Congo-Russia incident, a bomb planted by an unknown person exploded in the night in an empty market. In late May 2014, two lethal bombs planted at same Terminus Market in late afternoon exploded, killing over one hundred persons. 

I later visited the Adebayo Street area where the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria have their mosques and churchs close to one another. I passed by No.1, Kashim Ibrahim Street in Jos where the El-Buba Ministry, popularly called ‘Ebomi Ministry’ is located.

Governor Janah David Jang, the Governor of Plateau State, is one of the leading pastors at the Ministry. The governor hails from the Berom ethnic nationality, and his LGA is Jos South. I left to my hotel as night overspread the city like a heavy rainstorm.

I woke up around 2.30 a.m. on Sunday morning, after sleeping for six hours. That was the greatest number of hours I had slept for the past two and half weeks. I turned on the television in my hotel room to the American Cable News Network (CNN) and later to Al Jazeera, based in Doha, the capital and the chief town of the State of Qatar in western Asia.

I turned to my laptop to check the online editions of six leading Nigerian newspapers, The Nation, The Vanguard, The Sun, Thisday, The Punch and The Guardian. And later, I cross-checked my records of the journey so far, and studied seriously the administrative map of Bauchi State, the route I would travel through.

Around six a.m., I got a text message on my phone from a Bauchi journalist. He was informing me about the killing of 32-year-old Pastor Ayuba Moriya at the Dilimi village in the Toro LGA by about 20 armed men at about 11.00 p.m. on Saturday, July 12, 2014.

Toro LGA is located on the eastern border of Jos town, and on the western axis of Bauchi. Toro was my route to Bauchi town. The journalist said he got details from two sources and he contacted the police and they refused to comment on the incident. And that the sources attributed it to the handiwork of Boko Haram insurgents.

My friend really believed the accounts that the attacks on Moriya, a pastor, were done by Boko Haram insurgents. We chatted on the issue for some time, I actually disagreed with him and told him to investigate properly, because most robberies in northern Nigeria take that pattern; a large number of robbers will violently rob a person or a house at a time.

We are in a period when any incident is blamed on Boko Haram. It happened during the armed insurgence in the Niger Delta region, southern Nigeria from early 2006 to late 2008. Every single violent incident in any part of the region then was blamed on the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), even when the group was not responsible, I explained to him. 

The Jos morning breeze was tender, and calmed the feelings of discouragement which were beginning to overtake me. I ignore those feelings and walked away from the gate of my hotel, Eagle Valley Royal Hotel to the road

On the southern border of the Bussa LGA is the Riyom LGA, and on the east are Jos North and Jos South LGAs. The main ethnic groups in the Bassa LGA are Buji, Irigwe, Jere, Amos and Kiche. There have been some conflicts over land in the area among the groups.

Plateau State has about 50 ethnic groups scattered in its 17 LGAs, this excludes settler groups like Hausa, Fulani, Urhobo, Igbo, Yoruba and others.

A tricyle pulled up. The keke rider was a final year student of the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Jos.

“Officer, come like me drop you any place you are going” said the man. “I am going to Bauchi, can you take me there?” I replied him, smiling. 

The keke rider understood that I was joking “Okay, take me to the small motor park opposite University of Jos, I am going to Bauchi” I said to him.

“Please, come in” said the man without telling me how much I would pay him. 

He pushed aside small dark leather which covered the entrance to the keke like a door. I jumped into it and we took off, moving northwards. At the back and front of his keke was a small sticker and on it was, “Seventh Day Adventist Church.” When I saw it I asked him whether he was a member of the church and he answered in the affirmative by saying, ‘Yes’.

That was how our discussion started.

As we travelled through the old, rough streets of Jos with small and tall houses, some the classic colonial houses built of red bricks and in some places were modern block of flats roofed with all sorts of corrugated iron sheets. I saw a lot of armed security operatives especially around the Plateau Riders Park area. The streets were empty.

When I asked why the security operatives were all over the place. The man started speaking bitterly, and informed me how, they, the natives were so kind to the Hausa/Fulani group, offered them their land to stay, and today they want to claim their land which is not theirs. I didn’t stop him from explaining. I wanted to find out why there were many security operatives because it appeared something terrible was about to happen, or had happened. 

He dropped me off by the side of the School of Forestry opposite the gate of the University of Jos, which officials of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTWs) had converted into a mini motor park. The motor park is different from either Jabi in Abuja or Plateau Riders in same Jos North LGA. Both had walls built round them, but this one was an open space along the road called “Bauchi Motor Park”. At other motor parks, there were assorted types of cars and buses, but at the Bauchi Motor Park were few small cars travelling to the Bauchi metropolis, Gombe and other places in the north-east.

A Betra Opel car was the only car travelling to Bauchi. One short man dressed in dark suit was the only passenger in the car. 

To be continued.

Naagbanton lives in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, Nigeria.