Why did Jos go away?

But today Jos has crossed into the territory of bitterness and most people’s views of Jos have darkened. It has left the happy shores of pleasure and drifted into becoming a bottomless apology. No tourist, local or foreign, goes there anymore except he is ready for death, premature death, death at the hands of those he has never wronged. These criminals, terrorists and bandits, seem to have a design to consign Jos to the margins and make the city that was once the toast of tourists a forgotten territory, a whited sepulchre.

On Sunday, Palm Sunday, March 29, a community called Angwan Rukuba in Jos North Local Government Area was attacked and that attack claimed at least 27 lives. The attackers, according to reports, were dressed in army camouflage and rode on motorcycles. So the residents thought, wrongly, that these were government security agents and took no precautions. Then the gunmen started shooting sporadically, killing as many people as were on the path of their bullets.

The state governor, Caleb Mutfwang, described the incident as “barbaric” and an “act of criminality.” That is putting it mildly. It was a disaster too deep for tears because that was not the first time it has happened in that community. On December 24, 2010, there was a bomb blast in the same vicinity that claimed the lives of many residents who were shopping for the Christmas festival. The amazing thing is that these two incidents took place on the eve of two important Christian festivals, Easter and Christmas. So it is obvious that these incidents were planned to destabilise the lives of Christians at an important moment in their religious life. It could therefore not have been executed by people of Christian faith but by enemies of Christianity.

Read Also: Adelabu denies viral wealth claim, alleges coordinated misinformation campaign

The North Central Zone, especially the Middle Belt, has become, over the years, a place of conflict between citizens and settlers, farmers and pastoralists; several other persons such as travellers and expatriates have been targeted too. Very many dead bodies have been buried and many more persons who survived are carrying wound marks on their bodies. The crisis in the Middle Belt region of which Jos is a part has to do largely with the fierce competition over land and water resources between Christian agrarian communities and Muslim pastoralists. So you can call it a Christian/Muslim conflict or a farmer/herder conflict because there is a clear separation between them either on religious terms or in occupational terms. These conflicts have gone on for many years now without any solution. It is estimated that in the last two decades, about 11, 000 lives have been consumed by these conflicts in Jos alone. The number of the wounded is unknown but it must be a high figure too.

Many countries consider the Middle Belt region very unsafe and often advise their citizens not to set their feet on the region for non-essential activities. Tourists are actually warned to avoid the popular tourist centres in Jos because those places are soft targets for gunmen. These travel warnings have led to the abandonment of those hitherto busy tourist centres which used to contribute substantially to the economy of the state. The people of Jos, unfortunately, have self-pity sitting on their chests like a pile of bricks as they smell the rancid odour of frustration. They are frustrated for two reasons: (a) These attacks have never been prevented and (b), the attackers have not been arrested and brought to justice. So with failure on the two fronts impunity grows. So does frustration among the populace.

Evvie Nef’s Law is that “there is a solution to every problem; the only difficulty is finding it.” This problem has been around for decades yet no solution has been found. Several meetings have been held by past governors with combatants on both sides of the divide but no lasting solution has yet been found. It was the Chinese leader Mao Zedong who said that “politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” What is happening in Jos is politics but it is politics with bloodshed. Those who have the guns think that it is their guns that will give them victory in the political architecture of the state. But guns will not serve them exceedingly well.

If we were not pussy-footing over the establishment of state police, we would have had many police boots on the ground now in various local communities in Nigeria. The presence of a large number of armed policemen in various parts would scare some of the criminals from executing their evil agenda. The protection of the lives and property of Nigerians all over the country is a joint responsibility of the federal and state governments as well as the citizens of Nigeria. Our failure so far arises from two perspectives namely that we got stuck with one federally-controlled security agency and also that we do not get the citizens involved in the business of protecting them. Yes, the constitution gives the power of protecting us to the federal government only even though it calls governors the chief security officers of their states. This unpardonable gap in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria ought to have been corrected by now, 27 years after it was created.

The major reason for failure in the security arena is that all hands are not on deck. A famous Ethiopian proverb states that “when cobwebs unite they can tie up a lion.” We will see a major difference if all the three governments and the people of Nigeria work together on this matter. Right now the citizens think that security is the responsibility of the federal government since the constitution says so. But the truth is that everybody ought to be brought into the picture because there are more Nigerians in totality than our security operatives. Nigerians are everywhere in Nigeria but our security operatives are not everywhere. So if Nigerians are brought into the picture, they can provide valuable information that can lead to the unveiling of the plans of the criminals or their sanctuaries or their sponsors. That is what whistle-blowing is about.