An old woman was forced into a dangerous act last December, precisely on Tuesday, 27th. She escaped through a window, as a group of suspected Fulani herdsmen, armed with assorted murder weapons, wiped out her nuclear posterity. The peace of Wereng village in Kuru Station of Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State was shattered that Tuesday night when the assailants reportedly butchered Philip Francis, his wife Simi and their daughter Nera at about 11p.m. The family was enjoying its night rest when the foreigners struck as a matter of tradition. The trio never lived to be asked by cheeky policemen who they suspected might be behind the attack. The killers developed wings once the trio's bodies had been mangled.The old woman wobbled through the window, stormed neighbours' rooms in a frantic effort to arrest the act going on in her son's room but help was late in coming. Her husband, who could perhaps have enacted a feeble manliness and might also have succumbed to a raging machete, was away on a trip and did not witness the murder of those who should have performed the dust to dust rites at his grave when eventually he joins his ancestors.Were the neighbours paralysed by fear'Over to the Special Adviser to Governor Jonah Jang, Mr Ayuba Pam: 'It is very sad that this is happening at a time when government has intensified efforts at sustaining the peace in the state. When I got the distress call in the night, I was very disappointed at this pre-planned attack still persisting in the state. Government has kept faith in providing security, but some people are still bent on ensuring that the problem in the state continues.'The Plateau crisis, the internecine conflict between the indigenous population and the Hausa/Fulani settlers, signals the abiding paradox of Nigeria's nationhood: perpetual slaughter for national sustenance. For reasons that are not worth repeating, the deciders of Nigeria's continued existence, the fine logicians who dismiss any thought of a 'Christian South versus Muslim North' even while daily engineering plots that validate the statement, are the insurgents, the agents of terror in Plateau State, a minority belt. Since the authors of the Nigerian constitution prefer to shy away from geo-ethnic realities as they impinge on the national space, claiming that every Nigerian is an indigene anywhere s/he is domiciled in the country, governments at all levels can continue to play the ostrich, reducing ethnically-motivated attacks to 'the activities of miscreants' and 'criminally-minded elements' out to disturb the 'good people of ' their state.(For political reasons, state governors must describe their people as ''good' at all times, even while treating the same people like beasts of burden.)Boko Haram criminality, though it has understandably not attracted determined resistance from those who matter and should matter, together with the recent protests over fuel subsidy removal by the Federal Government on New Year day, seems now to be a convenient excuse for shying away from the Plateau question, but the war which we have predicted elsewhere might be closer in the horizon than we think. For spiritual reasons I am inclined to think that pretences to democracy and dialogue as viable means of securing peace across barriers (resolving disputes, if you prefer) will soon give way to the old brutal nature of human response. The solution to force, as I have noted elsewhere, is a greater force and until you can deal the spillers of blood in your domain a deadlier blow, anywhere in the world, you will be achieving very little, if anything at all, by trying to dialogue with them. I do not believe in dialoguing with demons. For reasons which lie in spiritual lunacy and a grossly warped sense of values, the nation's statesmen, particularly those who grossly underdeveloped the North over the years while slaughtering southerners to maintain their hold on power, have maintained a studied silence on Boko Haram criminality, a silence defined not by the absence of guttural noise but by the absence of a willing heart into which seeds of anti-terrorism can be dropped, a heart totally against senseless slaughter. But of course the removal of fuel subsidy was a problem, and yes, yes, every statesman must side with the masses. If this sounds proverbial, shots in the future will sound totally plain, effective and practical. There is no need for a metaphor in the face of mindless slaughter; a figure of speech can be treasonable, and finalise a sudden transition.Have these herdsmen murderers crafted an intricate plot whereby they subjugate the Berom, Angas, Tarok, Mwaghavul, Merniang, etc by perpetual surprise attacks' The Igbo say that if you want to get to the root of murder, you look for the blacksmith who made the machete. And so where do the herdsmen source their guns' Yes we know that local weapons are also used. And it is these same criminals who eat up the farms of the Plateau people via cattle rattle. Cattle rattle, a precise phrase, but let us also note the robberies committed by these over-pampered killers.The Plateau people have staged reprisal attacks on several occasions. They are overwhelmingly Christian and the Jos riots have always looked to the untrained eye like a religious battle. But it is a battle over land that you have in Plateau and anything else is merely a corollary of this battle. The owners of the land have never had problems with other settlers on the land, groups like the Igbo and the Yoruba, but whenever riots break out these southerners are killed based on seemingly religious patterns. The Igbo used to be perpetual casualties of the Jos killing until they bonded together and formed a viable defensive unit.Where do we go from here' Until Olusegun Obasanjo in the current Republic, the armed forces were clearly northern. Core northerners who are not in positions of authority take a cue from their kin in such positions and carry out carefully orchestrated ethnic cleansing programmes on the Plateau. Indeed, it is difficult to determine which Nigerian nationality is killed on such a regular basis by another tribe like the indigenous Plateau population, together, let us admit, with the Igbo. Why, just why is the entire nation silent, treating the Plateau question as an irrelevant pastime' Were members of the Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani, Ijaw and other nationalities in the shoes of the Plateau people; were they killed in such a regular fashion, would they be pleased' Would they be pleased, would they like it'If Nigeria does divide into North and South, the Plateau and other minority (Christian) populations in the North will remain the second class citizens they have always been in the North, even if they got converted to Islam, but then surprise attacks like those undertaken currently by Boko Haram could be their response to their situation. In all, then, there is no peace for the wicked, and those who kill by the sword will always die by the sword.Awolaja is on the staff of the Nigerian Tribune.
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