From Gyang Bere, Jos
On Wednesday, November 8, 2017, at Gwa-Rim, in Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State, Hellen Dabwarang cut a forlorn figure standing by the graveside. She watched the bodies of her brother, Reuben Danbwarang, 22, and two uncles, Dagyang Dabwarang, 33 and Sunday Danbwarang, 45, lowered into a mass grave that also accommodated six other corpses, all covered with sackcloth.
The tragedy that befell her was one of the latest episodes of the horrific soap opera of massacres that rage unabated in Plateau State.
For Hellen, 18, the horror was her second taste of the bitter pill of the unending violence unleashed by killer herdsmen on Plateau communities. Her mother died in a similar circumstance in 2014 when three women returning from fellowship were ambushed and killed in Gwa-Rim community.
The recent tragedy of the death of her brother––one of the nine casualties killed in an ambush by suspected Fulani herdsmen while on a return journey from the market––brought her world to a standstill. It was one death too many.
Victims of cruel fate
Hellen was an orphan. She lost her father in a fatal accident in April 2015, a year after her mother’s murder. The death of her parents left two helpless teenagers to the vicissitude of life. Her brother, Reuben, completed his secondary education and got admission into College of Education Pankshin in 2016 but was unable to progress due to lack of funding. Consequently, he resorted to menial jobs. To keep body and soul together, he journeyed to Makera, a horse market, on a weekly basis to hustle for farm produce to sell for little profits.
On that fateful day, as Reuben began his journey to the market, his sister left to the farm. Unknown to the orphans, the young man’s odyssey was his journey into death.
At the graveside, Hellen’s heart-rending wailings were hard to ignore: “I don’t know where to start now. Life is meaningless to me without my brother. He has been very supportive, encouraging to me. Where do I go from here? I can’t stay in that house alone. I don’t know what I have done to deserve what is happening to me. I lost my mother in the same manner. My father died a mysterious death, and my brother shot to death.”
She collapsed at the graveside when her brother’s corpse was being covered alongside other six bodies belonging to Felix Agwom 29, Chuwang Bitrus, 33, Bitrus Emmanuel, 30, and 45-year-old Daniel Nin. Buried in the grave were bodies of two other brothers, Daniel Shom, 45 and 25-year-old Dachollom Shom who went to the market to sell vegetables and other farm products.
The community echoed with more sad stories. No’omi Danbwarang, mother of the Danbwarang brothers went wild with grief, becoming uncontrollable upon hearing the dead would be given a mass burial. She had prayed to be given her dead to bury at home and not until it was agreed that each village should bury their corpses did she regain her sanity.
Deborah Felix, 22, lost a husband, Agwom Felix. Married in 2012, she gave birth to her first child in 2016, barely a year ago before her husband’s life was brutally snuffed.
The widow wailed as she followed the hearse conveying her husband’s corpse to the mass grave in Gwa-Rim village.
“I can’t imagine that I don’t have a husband now. This is a man who has endured with me in search of the fruit of the womb. Now that God has blessed the family, evil people have killed him,” she wailed.
“Where will I start from now? Do we really have a government in this state? Imagine how our people are killed by Fulani herdsmen on a daily basis and nobody is saying anything. People have become like goats and chicken that are slaughtered at any moment.”
Of the nine victims, only the corpse of Victor Gwong, Vice Principal of Government Secondary School Rim, is yet to be buried. At the time of this report, it was still at the morgue of Vom Christian Hospital.
The ill-fated journey
A concise picture of what happened came from Samuel, the driver of the ill-fated vehicle. He had a narrow escape from the hails of bullets that struck his vehicle. Here is his account.
It was about 7 pm when 16 passengers boarded his vehicle at Makera. The number of passengers exceeded the capacity of his Volkswagen car, but the passengers had appealed to him to help them, as it was practically impossible to get another vehicle to their destination at that time of the day.
Seven passengers crammed themselves into the boot, while five sat in the back seat and three, including the driver, shared the front seat. A passenger alighted a short distance before they reached the trouble spot at Diyan village. Another one soon got off. The driver was in the process of handing him his change when the assailants, concealed by the blanket of dusk, opened fire on the car.
Instinctively, Samuel opened the door for his passengers to run for their dear lives before he crawled under the car. While pretending to be dead, he inadvertently became a witness to the horror that unveiled as those who ran were pursued and killed by the attackers in different locations.
A demand for action
The Berom Educational and Cultural Organization (BECO), whose members were casualties of the attacks, reacted swiftly by petitioning the United Nations and Africa Commission of Human and People’s Rights to intervene in the mindless killings going on in Plateau State.
BECO’s General Secretary, Davou Choji Davou decried the way “Berom have been abandoned to our fate as if we do not qualify to be protected under the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
He urged the United Nations, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, ECOWAS Commission and other related international bodies to treat the case of the Berom in Plateau State genocide and systematic ethnic-cleansing.
He said: “BECO on its part has continued to voice out, document and report the prosecution of this agenda to the offices of the National Security Adviser, the Governor and all security outfits, up to the highest level of government, in hope that the perpetrators of these crimes will be ‘fished’ out and brought to justice.
“Sadly, no concrete action has been taken or results witnessed. To make matters worse, BECO has not received any acknowledgement of any of its numerous complaints and correspondences.”
His statement alleged that the “continuing the massacre of Berom” was aimed at displacing and dispossessing the people of their land.
The statement, which also indicted government for lack of visits to the communities who were casualties of the herdsmen killings, indicated that eight native villages sacked by Fulani herdsmen including, Mahanga community, have been taken over for grazing by cattle herders.