A Record Of Raw Grief And Terror -By Ike Willie-Nwobu

Nigerians have known insecurity for most of the past ten years. In rural areas which used to know tranquility and serenity even amidst poverty, insecurity has shattered the atmosphere forever, painting the environment with blood.

Two devastating security breaches in Wase and Bokkos Local Government Areas of Plateau State this month alone have demonstrated just how far away from security the country is.

In this time, for many families and communities around the country, pain has become the name of the game.
Since the late 90s,deadly insecurity has somehow managed to hang on to the coattails of Plateau State. Since the 2001 Jos crisis, which somehow managed to shock even the most unflappable of Nigerians with the scale of its horror, the state’s mystique as the “home of peace and tourism” has been shattered irreparably.

Since the crisis, recovery has proven impossible with the episodic peace in the state amounting to no more than a peace of the graveyard which shatters under the slightest pressure.

Rather than peaceful tourists touring the abundant natural endowments of the states, terrorists attack and raze entire villages at night, leaving behind carnage and condemnation. In December 2023, about six months after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu resumed office, about two hundred people were slaughtered in one of such midnight raids in Bokkos Local Government Area of the State.

Recently, the sheer number of ruthless attacks on Nigerians in different communities across the country has forced security personnel to refine the routine — their routine. After each of such bloody attacks, carefully worded statements are followed by a show of force in such communities.

Nigerians often do not know whether perpetrators are caught and punished. In fact, what tells them that they are not is the fact that one deadly attack is typically a rehearsal for an even deadlier attack not far away. This is precisely what has been happening in Plateau State for a while now.

That Nigerians continue to be killed in such brutal and brazen manner occasionally means that Nigeria’s security situation is one which is defying solutions. So much has been made and said about securing Nigeria and driving away the killers who prey so ruthlessly on vulnerable communities, but the fact that the killings have continued means that there is no solution yet. This calls the commitment of the Federal and Plateau State governments to end the killings into serious question.

The main line to fall out of the Federal Government’s response to the latest killings in Plateau State was that the Plateau State Government should resolve it. Such decades-long security challenges are notoriously difficult to deal with. In Nigeria’s convoluted security ecosystem where security agencies are under the federal government with state governments having limited control, it is a nightmare for the state government.

Asking the state government to deal with it looks like an attempt to shirk responsibility.

Given that the killings in Plateau State have now gone on for decades, is it until the entire state is wiped out by terrorists that the government of Plateau State and the Federal government will know to recalibrate their security strategy?

Has the government not received any intelligence on the identity of the killers in Plateau State? Given that it has most likely received plenty of intelligence, why is it holding back to act while innocent citizens are being slaughtered at will?

While the state government and the federal government draw near to the point where they will openly trade blame and blows on the killings in the state, it’s important to remember that killers remain loose in the state.
They are lurking in the dark areas where the government has simply refused to shine light and are waiting to pounce. Their bloodlust has not dulled at all and unless their weapons are blunted and their heels cramped behind bars, the long-suffering people of Plateau State will know neither peace nor the past they had before killers beat a path to the iconic state.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com