Published 4th Jan, 2022

By Gabriel Ogunjobi

At least four people were killed in two separate attacks between Friday and Sunday in the agrarian villages within the Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State, FIJ can report.

At about 8 pm on December 31, five vigilantes from Jebbu Miango were returning home from their duty post in order to prepare for a crossover service in church when they were ambushed by Fulani and Hausa marauders who killed one of them.

The victim killed was 29-year-old Adams Sunday.

**Vigilante’s motorcycle caught fire after the fuel tank was hit by a bullet**

Sunday Musa, one of the four survivors of the attack, told FIJ that the attackers ”shot to kill”, but ended up setting the fuel tank of their motorcycle on fire with their gunshots.

“While we were racing on the motorcycle, one of the gunshots hit our fuel tank and that was how I got burnt on my leg and hand,” he said. “They also shot at the back tyre.”

Musa said he heard “two of them speak Hausa Language, and another two speak Fulani” from where he hid along the Jebbu Miango axis known as the military shooting range.

FIJ understands that the military shooting range is just opposite the twin hills near Jebbu Miango community on the road leading to Jos, the capital of Plateau State.

Sources said the community’s vigilantes mounted a checkpoint on the road near the twin hills because they “discovered that the Fulani were hiding behind the hills to plan attacks on Jebbu Miango”.

While the government did not respond to the incident, there was another deadly attack on January 2 at Rafin Bauna, another community in Bassa.

A source confirmed that out of the three dead victims, two of them were Hausa natives while one was Fulani.

According to a statement by Makut Macham, spokesman of Simon Lalong, Governor of Plateau State, the victims were on their way from Dutsen Kura area on Sunday, when they were attacked.

Rafin Bauna and Dutsen Kura are two Fulani and Hausa settlements in Bassa near Zawra, an Irigwe community.

FIJ’s sources hinted that the latest attack may have emanated from a clash between the two ethnic groups resident in the two communities, eroding the possibility of a reprisal attack from the Jebbu-Miango indigenous farmers, who were Irigwe natives.

The governor described the Rafin Bauna attack “as yet another callous attempt by the enemies of peace to begin the new year with violence”, adding that the state government would “resist such attempts with all resources available to it”.

He also ordered the state security officers to fish out the perpetrators, making it one of the few times the governor would condemn an attack in Bassa LGA in the last year.

One of the community residents, who would like to be anonymous, criticized the governor’s stance, insinuating that the tone was “biased and leaning towards the Fulani, against the indigenous Irigwe people”.

In an interview with FIJ, Ishaya Mali Dewi, the vice-president of the Irigwe Youth Movement, noted that news from Rafin Bauna disrupted their annual festivity on Monday.

“We were at the Zhe-Zhe Day festival yesterday when the Sector 3 Commandant of the Nigerian Army in Jos called us to end our party earlier than planned before the attack on Sunday,” Dewi said. “We were not even aware there was an attack until the commandant informed us.

“He phoned us about it because we initially requested the presence of the Nigerian Army during our celebration.”

Dewi added that the unrest in Plateau persists because the government is yet to implement the joint recommendations by the Fulani herders and Irigwe farmers, one of which include an end to open grazing in Miango.

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