Jos: Playing With Fire
By
Adamu Adamu

Just as the Federal Government-appointed panel to look into the causes of last year’s religious crisis in Jos was settling down to business, the Plateau State capital erupted again. And according to Plateau State Commissioner, Mr. Gregory Anyanting, this eruption was started when Muslim youths launched an unprovoked attack on Christian worshippers attending a service in church.

If this is true, it raises a number of questions. First, it indicates a signal failure of the police force in Plateau State. Barely a year after a major crisis, and on a Sunday—one of the two days, the other being Friday—when security surveillance around places of worship should have been enhanced, the nation expects that the police won’t be caught in sixes and sevens.

Second, those attacked in that church or anywhere for that matter have the right to defend themselves. But since Christians don’t go to church armed, the commissioner may wish to tell the nation where they got the guns with which they defended themselves to account for the bullet-wounds on the bodies found. Or, is he insinuating that the arms used have all this while been hidden in the church?

Third, if he could say this with such definitiveness and promptness, the commissioner must have found a way of solving cases without investigation. And the worlds of investigative journalism and crime investigation will be happy to share this great secret. Or, is this a rehearsed answer to an anticipated question? In which case the commissioner must have had prior knowledge of the crisis; and, so, had his dictated answers ready. The truth, unfortunately, is that the Plateau State Commissioner of Police has been unable to cover his blatant and dishonourable partisanship with even the thinnest veneer of political and professional correctness.

And even if his assertions were not false, his position required him to speak publicly only on issues on which he could produce evidence; and even in such a circumstance, he must carefully weigh the consequences of his public utterances. Blaming one side to a conflict before investigation is carried out will give a toga of advance absolution to whatever atrocities the other side commits. And, not surprisingly, following the judgment pronounced by the police commissioner, all those in outlying villages began preparations and they descended on Jos; and, as a result, areas previously untouched by the crisis were by Monday encircled and torched.

Though Jang had planned well and put in place everything to cover his tracks and deflect any criticisms of his direct involvement in the crisis, he didn’t want to take chances. So, he got what he called the Society of Islamic Brothers [Perhaps he wanted to copy and translate the name of the Egyptian Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, in which case, the correct translation should have been: the Society of Muslim Brothers.] to absolve him of all blame and even commend him for his timely intervention.

Whatever we may think of their own intervention, we must admit that this Society of Islamic Brothers is extremely resourceful to be able to call a meeting of its executive council, have time to consider all the great works that Jang had done for Plateau and for Muslims, and conduct a thorough investigation into a crisis that was still going on, and in which its own members were being hunted down, and issue a statement exonerating Jang from complicity in it. And to be able to do all these things before the crisis was brought under control. Funny enough, when the exoneration was given, no one had yet formally accused Jang of the complicity they wanted to clear him of.

Next in the line of admirers, and coincidentally issuing a statement on the same day as the Society of Islamic Brothers, members of the Coalition of South-South Association[s], CSSA, announced their intention to honour Jang as The Harbinger of Peace and Progress in an elaborate ceremony coming up in the next few days. “The reason for conferring on him this recognition boils down to the fact that the state now enjoys good roads, water, local government development, mineral exploration, hospitals, qualitative education and a conducive environment for business among others,” the CSSA statement said. [Emphasis mine.]

In reporting all this the press has often been collusive and witless; but for the first time, there is an attempt at fairness. In a front-page picture captioned: The House that Set Jos on Fire, This Day [21/1/10] came close to real journalism on this issue, departing from the usual knee-jerk, prejudiced reporting that had become a hallowed hallmark of the so-called Ngbati press in times of national crises with religious undertones. Its conclusions and the minds of its readers have been permanently set as far as the culpability and guilt of Muslims in any religious conflict is concerned. And the few times when the facts are available, they are distorted and twisted to support a conclusion reached without them.

This is a press that cannot tell the truth about itself: it is ignorant even of its immediate surroundings, preferring to be predatory, self-serving and partisan instead. Unelected and therefore unaccountable, journalists wield the pen of the press as a weapon for sectionalist or religious war-mongering, when in fact they should take as a national public trust. But without its objectivity, the Nigerian press not only becomes a problem, it stops solutions to other problems being found. The journalist, as judge, fails his profession when he gives a prize to someone who ought to be made to pay the price. When the guilty becomes the innocent, of his conduct, nothing is likely to change; and a vicious cycle is doomed to continue.

While newspapers were reporting 460 killed, the real figure, gathered from the accounts of people on the ground—security operatives, victims and escapees—for Jos alone might well have passed the 3,000 mark. And only God knows what must have happened off the road. One escapee from Kuru, a village off Heipang Road, said except for the very few of them lucky not to have been at home when the killers came, no Muslim escaped alive: they were all slaughtered and dumped inside a well; and so body count is unlikely to tell the full story of the crisis.

One looks for but one cannot find rhyme, reason or rationale behind Jang’s almost psychotic obsession with taking vicarious revenge on behalf of his forebears. You can’t begin killing innocent people in Jos in this age and time to satisfy some primordial bitterness just because you imagined and could not get over the fact that their grandfathers might have maltreated yours. People, who are unable to come to terms with history, always think that solution for them lies in altering other people’s geography. But there is always dangerous short sight in the types of short-term solutions that are suggested by the intoxication of transient power.

They fear solutions to problems because the whole of their elitist essence depends on the dictum: I have a problem; therefore, I am. They reckon that if the problem disappears, so will they. And for that reason, Jang has consistently refused to cooperate with any attempts to find a solution to this crisis. He snubbed the panel set up by the House of Representatives and refused to recognize the one set up by the Federal Government. A source close to the Sultanate confirmed to me that throughout Sunday night when rumours of renewed attack against Muslims in Jos planned for the following morning reached Sokoto, His Eminence Sultan Mohammed Sa’ad Abubakar III rang Jang more than 20 times but the governor refused to pick the line. Certainly, this is not the attitude of an unbiased umpire or of someone interested in resolving a conflict. And now matters have gone from bad to worse.

In the absence of government or faced with the inaction of government or a government of inaction, it is to be feared that the ethnic and religious kith and kin of Plateau Muslims in neighbouring states may attempt to mount a revenge attack. This is no longer a possibility; it is a probability now.

Fortunately, this may not come to pass for many reasons. One, it is not altogether a civilized solution even for such a barbaric problem. Two, it is not the way problems of this nature are solved in a federal set-up. Three, there are too many reasonable elders among the Hausa-Fulani in the neighbouring states who can successfully prevent it. And, four, in the event this is contemplated, the police force will become surprisingly effective in containing it; because, their only failure is when Muslim lives are at stake. And, as usual, while the killings continue, there were allegations of police bias; proving once again that in crises of this nature, the police are not the solution; they are part of the problem.