It was a bloodbath in the middle of the night ,when suspected Fulani
herdsmen invaded Ancha village in Maingo District of Bassa Local
Government area of Plateau State, on Friday September 8, 2017.
They left behind on their trails deaths, cries of woe and unending
grief. Initially, there were 19 casualties comprising seven men and six
women including nursing mothers and six promising children.
The following day, their surviving parents and
siblings watched and wailed, throwing their hands in the air and
wrapping them around their lifeless bodies in utter helplessness and
hopelessness as the dead were given mass burial.
Agony of a mother
But the case of 38-year-old Lami Ishaya, a mother of six, is something
else. Though she survived the gory killing, right now she is a living
dead, a walking corpse. Life has no meaning for her any more as eight
members of her family perished in the attack.
The second wife of her husband, 45-year-old Ishaya Amadu, she lost her
four biological children, Musa 15, Bala 12, Saty 8, and 5-year-old
Friday that fateful night. In addition, she lost her husband, her senior
wife, father and mother-in-law.
The scenario that played out on the night of their death is one that is
bound to linger for a long time to come. She recalls that the villagers
were fast asleep when the harbingers of horror came calling at 1am.
Bedlam was let loose everywhere.
Amid the confusion that ensued following sustained bursts of gunfire
from every direction of the village community, the inhabitants, rudely
woken up from sleep, ran as fast as their legs could carry them, without
minding lurking danger. In the process, many, especially women, and
children were hacked down by the invading herdsmen who were fully armed
for the operation.
Lami, who was sleeping in the same room with her two children, said she
heard footsteps of the attackers approaching while she was busy trying
to wake up her drowsy children so that they could escape. But she never
really succeeded as the blood-thirsty assailants kicked open the door
and burst into their room. Faced with imminent death, she jumped out
through the window while leaving her two children behind.
But she nearly ran back when their cry of agony and shout of her name,
earnestly pleading for her to rescue them, became unbearable. She broke
down as she sat narrating details of the incident in which her children
lost their lives in an unprovoked cold-blooded murder. She recalled how
their voices got silent shortly afterward, tearing her heart and soul
further apart when it became obvious that they had been killed.
Not done yet,, the attackers went into the room where her husband was
sleeping with her other children and the second wife and hacked them to
death. She witnessed it all. She heard their cries of agony and earnest
pleas for mercy before they were eventually silenced with machete cuts.
Her heart was broken many times over. But when she noticed that they
were coming towards her direction, she ran farther into the bush.
“I don’t know where to start now that all I laboured for in my
entire life has been taken away in one night,” she wailed
uncontrollably. And, she began to wonder whether her decision to run
away was even a wise one. What is she living for again? Wouldn’t it have
been better to wait to be killed along with others? “It was better for
me to have died than to incur these losses. How can I overcome this
trauma?” Again, she began to weep.
Yet another sad one
The case of 28-year-old Martha Friday is also bound to make you cry. Her
two children, Ishaya, 9, and Emmanuel, 6, visited their grandmother in
August during the long school vacation, and were planning to return home
on Sunday, two days before the attack, in preparation for school
resumption last Monday. But the children, their grandmother and
grandfather perished in the attack. Martha, who was married in a
neighbouring village, is now left in deep grief. The whole thing looks
like a dream to her as she is yet to come to terms with the fact that
her two children are no more.
She now lives her life in total regret.
“If I knew that there was going to be an attack, I wouldn’t have allowed
them to visit their grandmother,” she told Saturday Sun. “At first, I
contemplated stopping them, but their father encouraged me to let them
go and we were planning to come and take them only for us to be called
that they were among those killed.”
Seventy-four-year-old Goh Rohu was mostly devastated with the killing as
he lost his wife and 15 close relatives in the attack. They include
Lami’s family. His extended family was badly affected in the incident
where five of his brothers, four wives and six children were killed.
“I want Federal and state governments to investigate these killings,” he
said. “It was carefully planned to wipe out the entire village and my
house was mostly affected. We have been living in peace for several
decades and we don’t know why this calamity is coming at this time.”
He
posited further: “Those who carried out the attack must be arrested and
prosecuted according to the law to stop others from taking similar
action on other communities. We are suspecting Fulani to have carried
out the attack because they had accused the village of killing one of
their sons, which is not true.”
Baba Rohu, who narrowly escaped death, added that the attackers who
operated within 30 minutes without resistance divided and took position
at strategic points before swooping on the villagers. Holes which
bullets penetrated into some of the houses whose doors are made up of
corrugated iron sheets are all too visible.
Genesis of the evil
The attack is said to be a reprisal carried out by Fulani herdsmen who
had accused the Miango community of beheading their son, Abubakar
Jibrial, and burying him in a shallow grave. The paramount ruler of
Miango, Bra Irigwe, Rev. Ranku Aka (retired) was pained because he
claimed to have called on the police to arrest the five members of the
community said to have been fingered in the murder. He wondered why the
Fulani would launch such a deadly attack on an innocent community.
The paramount ruler said he has forgiven those who carried out the
attack, but he noted that the Fulani admitted during a meeting with the
Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, that there were irate youths
among them. He would want them to make those youths available for
arrest, just as he has done in his community for absolute peace.
He revealed that the death toll has risen to 24 from the original 19
persons given mass burial after the attack as two of the people rushed
to Bingham University Teaching Hospital, Jos, could not make it, while
three more bodies were later recovered in the bush.
