First of all, I commend the Nigerian army for the efforts and determination so far in the search for the missing General Alkali and quelling the recent unrests in Jos, the Plateau State capital. However, let me quickly say that the Nigerian army authorities will answer to God for the lies they have persistently propagated against the Jos tribes. And for anyone believing what they read from them and castigating us on social media and elsewhere, time is coming when they will finish with us and come for you who don’t share any bloodlines or sociocultural identities with them. Its called divide and rule. They pitch us against one another by painting one tribe as black and worth hating after another.
They have repeatedly told you that Jos people are criminals and terrorists and their men fought us during the recent unrests that their dexterity overwhelmed us (the criminals). But wait until you know the truth. Wait till the videos of those that bore the risks are released. They accompanied Muslim youths to Christian homes, shooting even the aged and came out to tell different stories and you believe them.
They have told you that we in Jos attack people and kill them for meat, burying the evil they and their cohorts do against us and you believe them. They recently told you they recovered a car that was missing in 2013 with people inside. They however didn’t say if they found skeletons inside to prove they were buried in the pond or allow journalists see the car. Yet you believe them. They have told you the General’s phone was tracked to a location in Jos South yet they can’t follow the coordinates of that so-called tracker to identify exactly the location of the criminal and pick them out. Instead, they have gone to park people from their shops and on the road including pregnant women and paraded them on TV as criminals with their personal keys, wrist watches and cell phones shown as exhibits. Yet you believed them.
Let me begin with the General. The DHQ earlier said the man’s wife told them that he had passed Jos to Bauchi, and was somewhere in Toro when they last spoke. Now Toro is nearly 100km from Jos Bauchi park and there is no road linking Bauchi and the village where the pond in which his car was found is. Toro is in fact a no-go area for many Christians. So how did the said Berom terrorists get there, waylaid the man and brought him back to Jos South to be killed?
You are aware that Ex Plateau Governor Jang had in 2008 cancelled LG elections in the Muslim dominated Jos North and appointed his kinsman as caretaker of the LGA. The violence that followed that decision in November 2008 was followed by an alleged shoot at sight order by the Governor. It was later alleged that Jang had sent soldiers to kill 300 Muslims in a mosque in Jos North. The video that was used as evidence was however uploaded on YouTube on the 27th of November while the crisis started on the 28th, followed by the curfew during which the said order was given on the 29th. It was the discovery of this forgery of evidence that made the Muslim community withdraw the case in that regard.
It however did not give up trying to nail Jang and his selective government which was widely criticised even by Christians. In 2010, they killed over 300 people mainly women and children in Dogo Nahawa and continued attacks on Berom villages, all out of grievances against Jang. Then, one General Maina, a Muslim was the GOC 3 Armoured Div, Jos and the STF Commander in the state. He refused to pick Jang’s calls during the Dogo Nahawa massacre.
He was layer replaced by one General Umaru who married a Christian from Plateau but later allegedly killed her in 2010. The STF was more compromised under Umaru than Maina and that led to the formation of the State owned Operation Rainbow Police outfit by Jang in 2011. Its operatives drawn from the 17 LGAs of the state were sent on a training in neighborhood watch in Israel to come back and train others. They first trained 1000 and later in collaboration with the Israeli experts trained another 3000 on unarmed combat here in Jos. That time, Jang purchased two Armoured Personnel Carriers and some vehicles for the outfit from Israel.
But fast forward to June 2018 after 200 people were killed in Riyom and B/Ladi LGAs. Some loud mouth Jang antagonist, Hon. Idris Maje went on the floor of the National Assembly and reported that Jang had trained terrorists in Israel and purchased military hardware for them. He vowed to produce documents to that effect but till date, nothing is heard.
However, to still establish a case against Jang as a terrorist trainer in order to silence him for live especially from his Presidential aspiration, they still want to implicate him and his friend, the Gbong Gwom Jos who had paid for his bail when he was jailed for alleged corruption.
They have carefully identified a location in their district and dumped exhibits to justify the final extinction of the stubborn Jang and his people. You may say in 2013 when the so-called Bauchi car was dumped in the pond, Jang hadn’t shown any interest in the office of the President.
However, in 2012, over 800 people were massacred in Riyom and B/Ladi. Those attacks continued till 2014 when an additional 400 were killed in Bisichi, Fan and other places in Plateau North, mainly against Jang’s tribesmen. I believe that car if the story is true was waylaid in the heat of those attacks in reprisal but no one wants to remember what happened at that time.
The day the General was reported missing, three other Muslims were said to have been killed around Kwata in Jos South. But that was after two young native boys were killed in Vwang in same Jos South and their cattle rustled. The attention of the government was however concentrated on those killed in obvious reprisal instead. Same was the case in June. 200 were killed in Gashish etc. but those that staged reprisal riots were the ones arrested. The day the 200 were killed, before the death toll rose to 30, I called the military authorities and asked them to deploy help to Gindi Akwati and surrounding after narrowly surviving an ambush there. One of them stupidly said it was necessary as the Beroms had killed 4 people in a car at B.Ladi a day before. Meanwhile, day before that incident, Kassa was attacked and a man lost his family. And it was reported that he was the one that staged the ambush. In the end his reprisal was the focus.
The unfortunate thing is that they keep saying they are hunting Beroms but I am not Berom, yet I have lost over 100 kinsmen to these Fulani attacks. Many Igbo’s and Yoruba’s likewise. Yet, many of you still believe them when they tell you they are after Beroms and that the Beroms are terrorists. What a strategy to prevent you from supporting the very people you share roots with. It happened in the 1800s and it is happening again. When they were hunting us in our homes in company of the soldiers during the recent unrests, they were chanting Allahu Akbar, Jihadi and other religious enchantments. Whether you still believe that it is a war against your religion and not your brother that you are being made to hate or not, time is coming that you will weep and say had I known.
DISCLAIMER – Opinions expressed in third piece are strictly those of the writer and both those of Procyon News or its Editors.
