•  Gory tale of how family of eight was burnt in midnight attack
  • 18-month old baby, grandma, 86, roasted

From MURPHY GANAGANA, Jos

He sat arms akimbo on a wooden bench this snow-blurred morning, head rested on his thighs, depressed, confused and tearful. Villagers say he was once a boisterous young man, but at the moment, 40-year-old Musa Gunduma Dang, is a shadow of himself.

Evidently burdened, images of a gory scenario, which has turned his whole life upside down, had refused to go away from his memory. Sadly, that would be his lot for a long time. Since the incident occurred, life has become meaningless for him, but his thoughts of committing suicide had been strangely subdued by an unseen force he does not comprehend.

On this grey, cloudy day in March, 2014, there were no tell-tale signs of danger lurking at the corner. Suddenly, by 5.pm, sounds of heavy gunfire boomed at Torok, a Berom settlement neigbouring Goon, his ancestral home in Rim district, Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State.

Tale of horror

It was a blistering attack by suspected Fulani herdsmen, and Musa, alongside other youths in his village, mobilised to Torok to render assistance to their kith and kin. Though they succeeded in crushing the invaders, ironically, grief and sorrow, which has become his daily companion, visited him on a day he went out of his home on a rescue mission.

By the time he returned the next morning, the charred remains of his property and a mass of human flesh and skeleton, stared him on the spot where his house was located. Unknown to him, while they battled overnight to ward off the attack on Torok, a group of suspected Fulani invaded Goon, his village and set some buildings on fire.

His house, built on the fringe of the village, was the worst hit. As the fire raged, the shrill cries for help by trapped members of his family did not attract attention. Three armed soldiers among troops of the Special Task Force in Plateau State, deployed in the village on guard who were offered accommodation by him, fled the home with the speed of lightening on sighting the invaders.

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When the smoke cleared, his entire family had been consumed. Burnt to ashes, were his 86-year-old grandmother, Lyop Dang; father, Gunduma Dang, aged 61; his mother, Chundung Gunduma, 57, and wife, Kachollom Musa, who was 34 years old. He also lost all his four children, namely, Paul Musa, aged 8; Mathias Musa (5), Heron Musa (3) and Gershom Musa, aged 18 months.

“It was bedlam in my village”, Musa recalled, “It was as if the world had come to an end for me”; he told our correspondent last week at the palace of Gwom Rim, his district head. “When we were at Torok on that day to assist our neighbours, we saw our community on smoke; before we returned, the entire village was on fire. The Fulani came in hundreds and over-powered us, we couldn’t access our community despite several efforts; my house was the last compound in the village and I was living there with my entire family. I also sheltered soldiers in a section of the building, three of them, each in one room, assigned among others, to protect lives and property in the community. Unfortunately, they all ran away and left the inhabitants to their fate. We tried to come to the village that night but we couldn’t because of the number of terrorists who invaded with dangerous weapons; when the STF personnel fled, they chased us away, forcing us to pass the night at Diyan, a neighbouring village”, he narrated. 

For Musa, it was like a bad dream turned real. Unable to bear the sight of the rubble where his entire family perished, he relocated to Hoss, another community in Riyom Local Government Area of the state, though he was a teacher at the LEA Primary School, Gyil, when the incident occurred. He started teaching in 2001.

Starting afresh

It is three years when his family was wiped out of existence, but he had not been able to cement the fragments of his broken heart. To assuage the pains, he has taken a new wife, a 29-year-old woman who, incidentally, shared the same name with his late spouse, Kachollom. The marriage, which was consummated in April, last year, has produced a two-month-old child christened, Manaseh, who has become a source of consolation to him.

“I was terrified, helpless and hopeless after the incident; I lose consciousness each time the images flashed through my mind, but, somehow, I have never contemplated committing suicide. The memory of my late grandmother, father, mother, my wife and children, would remain evergreen”, said Musa, who returned to his village in January, last year.

Assisted through the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), by a Canada-based non-governmental organization, which provided seven bundles of roofing sheets to each household in Goon village to assist victims of the Fulani attack, he has rebuilt his house where he now resides, and commutes on week days to Angwan-Wereng, a neigbouring community where he teaches at the Local Education Authority primary school.