March 11, 2010
In the early hours of Sunday, March 7th 2010, a band of Muslim-Fulani herdsmen, believed to have come from the neighbouring Bauchi State, crept upon the villages of Dogon Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot Foron, located about 15 kilometres south of the State capital Jos; as they slept, and in a three-hour uninterrupted orgy of violence, massacred more than 500 Christian men, women and children of the Berom tribe. Many of the victims were butchered with machetes. Many were burnt beyond recognition, while many others died of gunshot wounds and asphyxiation when the houses in which they were sleeping were set on fire by this marauding band.
This most recent violence is simply another watermark in the long history of religious/ethnic violence, which has wracked this Nigerian city with deadly violence since 1945 and which seems to have increased in intensity and regularity since the introduction of Sharia in the 12 States of Northern Nigeria in 1999.
Coming on the heels of the most recent violence in the same area in January of this year, this massacre took place at a time when curfew was supposed to be in place in the area. This brings the issue to the fore, on how this could be possible, without being detected by the security agencies who are supposed to be monitoring the curfew to ensure that there were no movement of persons between the small and the wee hours of everyday.
The governor of Plateau State publicly accused the army of complicity in the massacre. He claimed that he informed the Army Commander three hours before the attack of an active intelligence that he got that an attack was imminent. The army according to the governor did nothing to stop the attack; only for the commanders to render themselves unreachable when he tried to contact them by telephone, as the attack has already gotten under way. The army finally reacted two hours after the attack has ended; sending troops to the area after the marauders have ended their operation. On the other hand, the Nigeria Police according to Newspaper reports had information about the intended attack and announced it about a week before the incident. What baffles any right thinking person is why they did not take any action to beef up security in the area until the incident occurred and claimed over 500 lives.
The question then is: who knows what? Why didn’t the army commander react to prevent a breakdown of law and order, when he had information from the highest official in the state that an attack in imminent? The state governor is not constitutionally empowered to order the army into an assignment. It is the prerogative of the President and commander in chief. But the power vacuum and the politicking presently going on over the status of the sick president Yar Adua, and the question of loyalty of the security chiefs to the Acting president Goodluck Jonathan is not helping matters. The acting president in the wake of the violence had to sack his Intelligence Chief Sarki Murktar. What does the sacked intelligence chief know about the planned attacked?
That another round of violence could be experienced in Jos, shortly after the January attacks in which Muslims were more of the victims, is indicative of the fact that the Nigerian government has shown itself either unwilling or unable to protect her citizens. The power vacuum at the Federal level is not even helping matters here.
Jos has continued to witness conflicts caused by an explosive mix of poverty, fight over scarce resources, religion, and ethnic politics. The Nigerian government have had several investigative panels set up to ascertain the causes of this culture of violence and make recommendations. Till date, there has been no implementation of the recommendations of those panels.
This is one massacre too many. The international community should not sit by and accept excuses any more from the Nigerian government. The Nigeria government must be pressured to live up to its statutory responsibility of protecting its citizens. Any government that cannot do that has lost its raison d’etre.
With the way things are going on right now, Nigeria sits precarious at the edge of the brink, and risks imploding on the weight of these contradictions. If the state of tension, and recurrent celebration of murder and impunity by Muslims against Christians and vice versa, in Nigeria is not arrested in good time, Africa may be on the way to witnessing another festival of savagery that would make Rwanda look like the antics of spoilt kids. It is our educated assessment that if nothing is done to arrest this dangerous trend, Nigeria, which is a geopolitical and socio-economically strategic country in Africa south of the Sahara, will yield to the primeval forces of murder and disintegration that will break up the country into pieces.
The violence is Jos is not an episodic outburst as some would have us believe. Plateau State has assumed the inglorious character of a perennial theatre of murder, where Christians and Muslims massacre each other at the least provocation. The situation has coagulated into a systematic culture of impunity, where anyone could get up and murder his neighbour because of his ethnicity, religion, or political affiliation. This symphony of barbarism must stop.
Press reports in the major media report that hundreds of Nigerians were killed or lost their lives in the melee. This inadvertently bellies the fact that behind each individual death was a criminal barbarism in the name of undefined socio-economic, ethno-political and religious ideology.
We at the International Society for Human Rights call on the Nigerian government to wake up from its slumber, and assume its statutory responsibility of protecting the lives and property of its citizens.
This is one massacre too many.
Dr. Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh,
Director, African Department
International Society for Human Rights,
Frankfurt am Main
Germany
This most recent violence is simply another watermark in the long history of religious/ethnic violence, which has wracked this Nigerian city with deadly violence since 1945 and which seems to have increased in intensity and regularity since the introduction of Sharia in the 12 States of Northern Nigeria in 1999.
Coming on the heels of the most recent violence in the same area in January of this year, this massacre took place at a time when curfew was supposed to be in place in the area. This brings the issue to the fore, on how this could be possible, without being detected by the security agencies who are supposed to be monitoring the curfew to ensure that there were no movement of persons between the small and the wee hours of everyday.
The governor of Plateau State publicly accused the army of complicity in the massacre. He claimed that he informed the Army Commander three hours before the attack of an active intelligence that he got that an attack was imminent. The army according to the governor did nothing to stop the attack; only for the commanders to render themselves unreachable when he tried to contact them by telephone, as the attack has already gotten under way. The army finally reacted two hours after the attack has ended; sending troops to the area after the marauders have ended their operation. On the other hand, the Nigeria Police according to Newspaper reports had information about the intended attack and announced it about a week before the incident. What baffles any right thinking person is why they did not take any action to beef up security in the area until the incident occurred and claimed over 500 lives.
The question then is: who knows what? Why didn’t the army commander react to prevent a breakdown of law and order, when he had information from the highest official in the state that an attack in imminent? The state governor is not constitutionally empowered to order the army into an assignment. It is the prerogative of the President and commander in chief. But the power vacuum and the politicking presently going on over the status of the sick president Yar Adua, and the question of loyalty of the security chiefs to the Acting president Goodluck Jonathan is not helping matters. The acting president in the wake of the violence had to sack his Intelligence Chief Sarki Murktar. What does the sacked intelligence chief know about the planned attacked?
That another round of violence could be experienced in Jos, shortly after the January attacks in which Muslims were more of the victims, is indicative of the fact that the Nigerian government has shown itself either unwilling or unable to protect her citizens. The power vacuum at the Federal level is not even helping matters here.
Jos has continued to witness conflicts caused by an explosive mix of poverty, fight over scarce resources, religion, and ethnic politics. The Nigerian government have had several investigative panels set up to ascertain the causes of this culture of violence and make recommendations. Till date, there has been no implementation of the recommendations of those panels.
This is one massacre too many. The international community should not sit by and accept excuses any more from the Nigerian government. The Nigeria government must be pressured to live up to its statutory responsibility of protecting its citizens. Any government that cannot do that has lost its raison d’etre.
With the way things are going on right now, Nigeria sits precarious at the edge of the brink, and risks imploding on the weight of these contradictions. If the state of tension, and recurrent celebration of murder and impunity by Muslims against Christians and vice versa, in Nigeria is not arrested in good time, Africa may be on the way to witnessing another festival of savagery that would make Rwanda look like the antics of spoilt kids. It is our educated assessment that if nothing is done to arrest this dangerous trend, Nigeria, which is a geopolitical and socio-economically strategic country in Africa south of the Sahara, will yield to the primeval forces of murder and disintegration that will break up the country into pieces.
The violence is Jos is not an episodic outburst as some would have us believe. Plateau State has assumed the inglorious character of a perennial theatre of murder, where Christians and Muslims massacre each other at the least provocation. The situation has coagulated into a systematic culture of impunity, where anyone could get up and murder his neighbour because of his ethnicity, religion, or political affiliation. This symphony of barbarism must stop.
Press reports in the major media report that hundreds of Nigerians were killed or lost their lives in the melee. This inadvertently bellies the fact that behind each individual death was a criminal barbarism in the name of undefined socio-economic, ethno-political and religious ideology.
We at the International Society for Human Rights call on the Nigerian government to wake up from its slumber, and assume its statutory responsibility of protecting the lives and property of its citizens.
This is one massacre too many.
Dr. Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh,
Director, African Department
International Society for Human Rights,
Frankfurt am Main
Germany
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