My daughter, Ifeoluwa, called on Monday to ask why I was in Jos. I explained that I had been appointed as a member of a fact-finding committee on the incessant attacks on communities in Plateau State and the inauguration was scheduled for the next day. She replied, “you have a way of getting yourself involved in all these strange assignments.” Those words echoed in my mind on Tuesday when, inaugurating the panel, Governor Caleb Mutfwang mandated us “to conduct an in-depth assessment of the persistent security breaches, understand the root causes, and propose actionable recommendations for lasting peace, justice, and stability in affected communities” in Plateau State.
My daughter is right. I don’t know what can be stranger than being asked to proffer solutions to the ethno-religious killings that have claimed thousands of lives over a period of more than three decades. But I am in good company here. Our chairman, Major General Nicholas Rogers (Rtd)had commanded ‘Operation Lafiya Dole’ against Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists in the Northeastern part of the country and ‘Operation Safe Haven’ in the same Plateau State. Having also served in the United Nations African Mission in Darfur among other assignments, he understands the nature of the crisis we are facing. Another member, AVM Ibrahim Shafi’i (Rtd), also has extensive experience in such matters given his military service and current legal practice. And then we have Jonathan Kure, a retired deputy Director General of the State Security Service (SSS) who once served in Plateau and Lawan Usman Safana, a retired Assistant Director General and former SSS State Director in Plateau State.
Other members of our panel include Yakubu Bawa, a Jos-based legal practitioner, Esther Lolo, a retired Judge of the Kaduna State High Court, Gad Shamaki, a civil society activist and Amina Elelu-Ahmed, a former Director of Legal Service at the National Orientation Agency (NOA). Our Secretary, Timothy Parlong, a legal practitioner and retired permanent secretary in the state civil service, has institutional memories, having served in some of the previous committees on the never-ending crises. Parlong happens to be the only indigene of Plateau State on our panel, which the governor said he carefully selected to demonstrate transparency on the issue.
By our mandate, we are expected to establish the number of communities that have been attacked and the approximate number of casualties from 2005 to date; establish the identities of persons who perpetrated the attacks and their possible motives and sponsors; and identify possible routes for bandits into the state and recommend measures to limit their access. We are also to recommend appropriate succour to identified victims and communities and suggest how to stop further occurrences. Though we are expected to engage with community leaders, victims, security agencies, and other relevant stakeholders across the state, we have just two months to complete our assignment!
Before the defining violence of 2001, the reprisal attacks of 2004 and the subsequent ones in recent years under the current democratic dispensation, there were similar violent eruptions under the military. In 1992, we witnessed the Mwaghavul communal crisis in Mangu local government area which recurred in 1995. In 1994, there was the famous ‘Jos Riot’ and in 1997, there were clashes in Lakushi and Sabon Layi in Langtang local government. The consistent pattern in all these crises, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives, is that victims appear to wait to plot their revenge. Hence, one cycle of killings inevitably leads to another.
Indeed, the gravity of our assignment hit me last Friday when I was with Sunday Dare, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Information. Although he did not discourage me, I could deduce from his comments that attempting to seek enduring peace in Plateau State is an uphill task, to put it mildly. A journalist of repute who served as Minister of Youth and Sports under President Muhammadu Buhari, Dare was born and raised in Jos which his family knew as home. But 16 years ago, in December 2009, Dare lost a number of those family members in a gruesome manner. “My only elder brother was hacked down with knives and machete and left to burn” along with their house, Dare recounted in January 2010, following that bout of violence. A year earlier, “precisely November 2008, my immediate junior sister’s husband was burnt down in his house while trying to escape after helping his family to safety. The 10-bedroom family duplex of my in-laws was razed to the ground,” Dare wrote in his recollection. “Two of my childhood friends were knifed to death in the open streets. The three days of reporting for the Voice of America that I spent in Jos after the November 2008 riots were scary. I saw a war zone with survivors walking around like zombies.”
Like most tragic occurrences across the country, there have been numerous panels of inquiry regarding the killings in Plateau State. Governor Mutfwang said as much on Tuesday both at the official inauguration and our private session that followed. He told us we were carefully chosen to reflect the diversity of Jos which is “mini-Nigeria” – a city in which many foreigners have also settled for decades and call their home. “There have been many inquiries in the past. I can assure you that by the time you do that sitting (a public hearing), every critical stakeholder to your assignment will be present,” the governor assured us. “We want to get to the root of these problems and resolve them.”
From the Bola Ajibola Judicial Commission of Inquiry (2009) to the Niki Tobi Judicial Commission of Inquiry (2002), there have indeed been many reports. But I understand why Mutfwang set 2005 as baseline for our assignment. A similar committee chaired by Mr Thomas Kagnaan had revisited the violence between 2001 and 2004 with its report submitted in October 2004. According to that report, 53,787 persons, comprising almost 19,000 men, more than 17,000 women and 17,000 children were killed during 32 months of tit-for-tat violence. The committee arrived at the figure after visiting affected communities where survivors listed the relations they had lost in the fighting between rival armed militia groups. No fewer than 280,000 people were forced to flee their homes, according to the report, with at least 25,000 houses razed to the ground and some 1,300 cattle slaughtered. That was 21 years ago, and several (and more violent) battles have been fought since then.
I have written dozens of columns on the violence that has reduced the people of Plateau State to little more than undertakers. My most recent, ‘When Will the Killings End?’ was published last September. In July 2023, barely six weeks after assuming office, President Bola Tinubu confronted this problem after a spate of killings. In a statement, ‘Plateau Killings: We Must Break this Cycle of Violence’, he expressed sadness and grief. “It is most unfortunate that in this orgy of violence, an innocent eight-month-old baby in Farin Lamba community of Vwang District, Jos South Local Government, died in a conflict she knew nothing about”, the president said. “A major consequence of perennial conflict is always the tragic loss of innocent lives.”
I agree with the president, but his administration should offer more than mere preachments that have become the defining response from the federal government over the years. It is also commendable that Mutfwang is determined to end the orgy of violence and bloodletting that has defined the state for decades. But other stakeholders, especially religious and traditional rulers, have larger roles to play. Fortunately, this assignment has given me the opportunity to engage some of them in the weeks ahead. And my message is this: With each side attempting to eliminate the other through what has become a bilateral genocide, to borrow a phrase coined in Rwanda, they must be prepared to end all appeals to hate and guilt by association.
As we drove to town from the airport on Tuesday, I beheld the luscious vegetation. And I wondered why we tend to waste all the resources bestowed upon our country by mother nature. That feeling came back yesterday morning when I decided on an outdoor walk in very cool weather one only gets to experience outside the shores of Nigeria. “Everybody knows that if you eat vegetables, there’s every likelihood that they came from the Plateau,” Mutfwang said on Tuesday while explaining why peace in his state is good for our country. “This is a state that can contribute significantly to Nigeria’s food security and in many respects, when it comes to farming potatoes, for example, you don’t have anywhere outside the Plateau.”
I am not under any illusion that our panel is guaranteed success considering that there had been so many such attempts in the past. The best approach, as Shafi’i counselled on Tuesday, is for each of us to keep an open mind. And that will be our guiding philosophy in this assignment. Perhaps I should conclude with my take two years ago after another round of what I described as a cycle of multilateral killings.
At the end of the day, all the contending parties in the violence must come to the sober realization that they have only been losing lives, wealth and their peace of mind. Their children are de-socialized due to religious and cultural teachings about the sanctity of life being cheerfully violated. A land that was once renowned as a haven of peace and agricultural productivity now exports only tales of man’s inhumanity to man. I hope that by the end of our assignment we can contribute to changing that narrative for an enduring peace in Plateau State.
Amaechi at 60
I first met Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi at the inauguration of the National Stakeholder Working Group (NWSG) of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) by President Olusegun Obasanjo on 16th February 2004. Then Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Amaechi was the representative of Southern Speakers with then Gombe State Speaker representing his Northern colleagues. I had been nominated to represent the Nigerian media in the group chaired by Mrs Oby Ezekwesili. Amaechi has, of course, since progressed in his political career. He served eight years as Governor of Rivers State and eight years as Minister of Transportation under President Muhammadu Buhari. Meanwhile, I have kept reminding him in the last 21 years that a friend with political power and influence is a friend lost. But on a serious note, even his most implacable foes would concede one thing to Amaechi: What you see is what you get. As he therefore clocks 60 next Tuesday, I wish him long life and good health.
You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
