Stemming The Jos Bloodbath …Nod For The C-In-C’sMilitary Option

At long last, President Goodluck Jonathan, last Monday,discarded the kid-gloves he had been using to tackle security concerns in Nigeria particularly, the near endless, wanton killings on the once peaceful Plateau, by ordering, the Army to battle architects of the senseless ‘war’ in Jos.

Before drafting the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshall Oluseyi Petinrin to take full charge of the security situation, countless innocent lives of defenseless men, women and children had been wasted in blizzard degrees that actually questioned the competence of the Commander-in-Chief to protect lives and properties in the land.

In the last three weeks alone, more than 100 persons were killed in a renewed orgy of insane bloodletting following disagreement over a praying ground, with an even more dangerous likelihood of prompting  fresh killings in reprisal attacks. Infact, to state that the once very warm ambrosia of Jos is now totally gone and  replaced by horror, deaths, weeping and wailing is to state it mildly.

Frankly, Jos has become an atomic community at constant war with itself, and with very little or nothing known as to why the bloodbath can never abate, or why nothing has been or can be done about similar acts of moral depravity that tend to diminish the true value of human life, to those of poisonous files that must be annihilated, as speedily as the architects of war deem necessary.

On March 22, last year, this column had warned against the familiar choice  of sweeping under the dusty carpet, similar mayhem on Sunday, March 7, 2008 in which more than 350 people, mostly Christians were massacred, Nigerians were told of some arrests made with a promise of early trials. Titled, In This Place Of Horror, that work not merely warned of more killings, but also attempted a chronicle of earlier bloodletting which attracted little or no action, and which apparently served as a potent incentive for even more senseless killings, destruction and desecration of a Christian’s day of worship.

That work recalled, that between September 7 and 17, 2000, when the first cases of ethno-religious riots occurred in Jos, in which more than 1,000 persons were killed, not a single soul has, to date been punished for such inhumanity to fellow humans.

Naturally, because none had been held accountable for such crimes, barely four years later in 2004, the Plateau boiled again over clashes in Yelwa, where more than 500 persons were reportedly killed. At that time, the best, then serving Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo did was to declare a state of emergency.

Expectedly, since the 500 lives earlier lost did not result in the punishment of even one culprit, hiding under a laughable excuse of council election disputes, the same traditional masterminds of the near recurrent Jos mayhem struck less than a year after, claiming in that action as many as 700 lives. There again, nothing tangible was done by government. Don’t forget, in late January, last year another minor dispute over a plot of land had reportedly claimed 350 lives, according to government figures, although independent national tabloids variously quoted between 600 and 650 deaths.

On Monday, May 24, of the same year, this column again ventured another reminder of the need to tackle decisively, the seemingly intractable chain of bloodbath on the Plateau. Titled, Lest We Forget …Whither Jos Murderers?, this column wrote, in spite of the countless deaths that rendered human life worthless “those expected to act have done nothing even after the Ajibola Commission had, infact, investigated the matter and submitted its report, in which very influential politicians and members of the Obasanjo Presidency were indicted.

It was killings of these nature and government’s seeming helplessness in checking the frequent ethno-religious disturbances in parts of the North, that might have pushed, the now embattled, Libyan strongman, Col. Muammar Gadaffi, into suggesting the break-up of Nigeria along religious lines, as was the case between India and Plakistan”.

As would be expected, all, especially, those that Nigerians depended upon to act fast in halting the ring of killings but chose silence instead, at once, united to condemn Gadaffi in true or pretentious love of a country, whose unity they choose to hate and love at will for varied reasons: love, only when they have, in their grip, political power, and hate, when they are without it.

Daily, it is increasingly becoming clearer, that most of the killings are driven by political and ethno-religious sentiments often master-minded by those who found in divisions across such lines, their own arrival at the centre of political renown. That, without doubt, explained successive governments’ reluctance to addressing, in a lasting manner, the fluctuating fortunes of Jos and elsewhere.

It is in this light that Jonathan’s option of a better organized and more credible Military presence shall be seen as the first, just a first step. But it is not enough and never shall be, because unless and until the real masterminds and their faceless sponsors are brought to book to serve as a deterrent to others, Jos can never be Jos again.

That is why President Jonathan must not allow himself to be fooled by the temporary, even phoney peace Jos has experienced between Monday and now. It is, methinks, the peace of the grave-yard which Jos has been familiar to after every bloodbath and resultant half-measures, in the name of interventionists security moves. It is also the reason many are  not enthusiastic about this.

Human rights activist, Gad Peter Shameki captured it most aptly when he said last Thursday, that he did not believe something exciting was in the President’s directive, because, according to him, “the military have been on ground on the plateau since 2008. I am made to understand that the Commander of the Special Task Force (STF) takes directives from the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). So I really don’t see anything new or exciting about the whole action. However, I am in full support of anything that will give peace to the Plateau.”

That peace will come, not just because of the presence of the Army, because worse atrocities had been committed under the nose of soldiers watching on the city for years.  What is indeed required, like the This Day editorial of Sept 14, 2011 and My Agony of May 24,2010 clearly suggested. Titled, “The Killing Field Called Jos,” the This Day piece, like My Agony’s, titled, Lest We Forget …Whither Jos Murderers, captured the thinking of the government and people of Plateau State and warned that unless and until, “those who have constantly been indicted in the different panels’ reports are brought to book and a serious reconciliation initiated, the situation in Plateau may not have been addressed as such”.

Such a step requires a stronger political will and respect for the sanctity of human life to actualize, because, Jos is what it is today not so much for wont of the right ideas to arrive at a just end, it has instead been for reluctance of successive governments to hurt political friends and allies and risk losing loyal political fellowship in power, no matter now criminally minded such loyalists may be.

President Jonathan must make the clear difference by giving the Plateau people and their government the much needed presidential support by ensuring that they pursue the legal process needed to identify, try and punish all those who either directly or indirectly support the killings and destruction of property.

To achieve that would require also the dusting of various reports by panels of enquiry that at one time or another investigated the cases of mayhem that in recent years became a recurring circle, identify all those indicted and then implement all reasonable recommendations duly adopted by the various government white papers, thus far issued.

The only way to make this new process work, or at least wear the semblance of credibility, is for the Commander-in-Chief to ensure that there indeed, are no sacred cows in the whole hug and that  justice is served for the good and well-being of the living.

Those who express pessimism about the process are entitled to it, going by the disturbing antecedents of the past. That without doubt, also places on President Jonathan an even greater burden to deliver, because for now, his scorecard on superintending security challenges in the land, methinks, is below average.

My Agony is that there are still, within the security forces, some fifth columnists who are out to frustrate every effort at ensuring lasting security, in the false belief that their true economic survival can never be assured except through unrest of the Jos kind. And for that, they would do any and everything to ensure that even when the bird is slaughtered, some of its feathers must remain. So they’ll one day become birds, more dangerous birds. Just for their survival.