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Nigerian troops on ‘red alert’ after 500 killed around Jos, mainly christians; clashes continue…
Special to USAfricaonline.com
March 7, 2010 (Bloomberg) — Nigeria’s acting President Goodluck Jonathan placed security forces on “red alert” around the north central city of Jos after renewed sectarian violence in the city claimed about 200 lives.
The victims, most of them Christians, died in attacks early today in the village of Dogo na Hauwa, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) south of Jos, which has been at the center of deadly Christian-Muslim tension, according to Mark Lipdo, the spokesman for a Christian non-governmental organization.
“The security services are on top of the situation,” Ima Niboro, spokesman for Jonathan, said today in an e-mailed statement from Abuja, the country’s capital. Jonathan is consulting with security chiefs on the situation and has directed troops to deal with those responsible for the violence, the statement said.
More than 400 people died and 4,000 people were injured in three days of clashes between Christians and Muslims that occurred in Jos in mid January, according to Civil Rights Congress, a Nigerian human-rights group.
There are conflicting accounts of why that violence broke out in the city, which is about 200 kilometers northeast of the West African country’s capital, Abuja. Some reports blame a dispute over the rebuilding of a house destroyed in a clash more than a year ago, while the city’s police said it was the result of an attack by Muslims on Christians in a church, according to Human Rights Watch.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, with more than 140 million people, is divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. ref: Bloomberg/ By Paul Okolo and Ardo Abdullahi Hazzad
OPEN LETTER TO HILLARY CLINTON
FROM: 1/1 KURU KARAMA
KURU.
PLATEAU STATE NIGERIA
TO: FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON,
Sir,
RE: YOUR COMMENT ON THE RECENT SECTARIAN CRISIS AT DOGO NA HAUWA
I wish to draw your attention to the comment you made regarding fulani pastoralist whom you condemned unreservedly and biasedly choosing to ignore the even bigger massacre of the Fulani pastoralist here at Kuru karama, Tim Tim, the same Dogo na Hauwa you have been talking about, Forom, Sabon garin Kanar, Haipang, Gero etc. We have lost our small Children to the cruel hands of drunk Berom youths, those infants that we gave birth to, those Children that soaked us wet joyously with their urine, those infants we love talk to even when they were too young to understand what we were saying. We love them. We lost our wives to the cutlasses (same weapon that the state and local Government bought and distributed to so called ‘indigenes’ under the guise of environmental sanitation) of the Berom people, those wives we earned the hand of marriage in the hardest possible way(s) in the world possible through our traditional “Shadi”. If you have no idea what it is, have fun in reading about our culture. That’s what we lost and we lost them in hundreds. They bludgeon and hacked to death and then dumped in sewage our wives and Children. They might have learned that outside the country and may have as well wrapped our dead in pig skin. We lost our cattle, our ancestral heritage and source of livelihood. They were stolen from families after being wiped off the map by the Beroms. These are cattle we inherited from generations in hundred of years of succession. We are just like the Masai of Kenya, difference is that we are Muslims and do not drink the blood of cows and also don’t speak the same language. I can’t remember anyone from the west except the Human right watch that took interest in these bloody massacres. No response from US or the Pope probably because Corren Dufkin reports of HRW seems not to be credible enough to the West. The way of Nigeria is that everything is corruptly destroyed in PDP politicking to the extent of no justice or fairness can ever be attained same way that no credible election can ever be organize under the present system. Jang was imposed on everyone through a fraudulent election in PDP with a promise to Beroms (is ethnic) to wipe off the map all Hausa –fulani Muslim and reclaim lands. Remember Madamme, that this crisis has been re-occurring since September (7th – 12th 2001) and some where even quick to relate it to the 9/11 terrorist attack on US. Up till this day as I am speaking, not a single mastermind or perpetrator has been arraigned before a court and no compensation ever paid for Human and material lost to both Muslims and Christians. It seems the government thinks that a hundred million naira to compensate both sides (Christian and Muslims) and buy peace is too expensive talk less of carrying along justice to all the culprits from both sides. You see we the Fulani are very nomadic, highly cultural and with very poor level of modern education. The Nomadic education that was proposed long ago was quickly hijacked by evangelists notably Professor Mary Lar and Wife of the first civilian Governor of Plateau State, a known advocate of ethnic cleansing of Hausa-Fulani Muslim. It was a case of trading one faith for modern education to be funded by a secular Government and of course it logically failed.
Even the help we enjoyed in terms of vertinary medical care for our cattle from a Federal institution with a prominent Muslim at the head, Dr Abubakar Lamorde was lost following his Physical dismiss from office by Beroms youth only to be succeeded by a Berom lady Dr Lami Lomben. This was a prelude and eventually she made sure that Fulani were exterminated from Vom close to Kuru and residential apartments allocated to federal staffs who are Muslims within the national vertinary research institute NVRI Vom burned down in the presence of state security. Minorities cannot fight a Government that chose to ethnically cleanse them. The odds are against us.
What our kinsmen did in Dogo na Hauwa that attracted your comment is wrong and condemnable but nothing in comparison to what was done to us at the places mentioned earlier. Fifty six bodies were buried today according to a Government organized mass burial for victims from all the Berom villages affected and not five hundred unless one is mischievously aiming at five million, a figure close to the Holocaust statistics. If it is an eye for an eye that should leave the whole world blind, Fulani’s owe the Beroms balance of deaths. Truth is that it is increasingly becoming obvious that Muslim’s interest can never ever be a concern the international community lead by the western world. It was fore-told and said by our grand-parent but we forgot that in the course of modernity. Do you think the Hausa-fulani Muslims would ever welcome the recent offer by Al-qaeda to help in fight after The Kuru-Tim_Foron Massacre of Hausa-fulani Muslims that was aired internationally? We do not welcome that offer. But what do you expect of us as minority facing extinction from Plateau state government organized violence against us? Choosing extinction or accepting Al-qaeda support? No one can say what if it comes to that. But we don’t support an organization like the Al-qaeda or their ideology and we can only wish that our cry would be heard and our death compensated, our cattle restored and justice done.
A lesson to be learned is that this is a case of people (ausa-fulani Muslims) psychologically sickened by loss, despaired by lost of hope and unattended by the government. The Fulanis that were affected by the Beroms attacks 2 months ago should have been arrested and send to be to federal unit so that they can receive counseling (including psychiatric evaluation to identify potential avengers) and then compensation and justice follow. But no official register was opened for them, no compensation paid and no hope of bringing perpetrators to justice. Everyone was left to wander about and fend for themselves. And what do you expect from these trauma stricken people? Be thankful to God or Allah for their lives. You see it is not about Islam or Allah, those fighting are fighting to avenge the death of loved ones and dispossession from generation long means of livelihood-their cattle. This is the fact unless one chose to be mischievous. I can comfortably say the Berom youths and their political leaders that orchestrated and executed this did not do that in the name of Christ. It was just stake hatred and envy. If it were attack to win souls for Christ, those Muslim families would have been alive after they begged for their life and accepted Christianity on the spot only to be summarily executed.
Kuru is where we lived for generations even before existence of modern day Nigeria and most of the other towns surrounding we founded and named before the coming of the British colonials. Example Barikin Ladi, Sabon garin Kanar, Sabon-garin Nayaya, Mai-adiko, Kuru karama, Gindin akwati etc all were founded by the Hausa Fulani. These are the same places we don’t have right to stand for election or received Governmental support. We just live the way we can. Today none of us live in those our ancestral home and none will forever whatever happens. This was a successful campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing well organized and executed as an electoral promise by the Governor Jang and this is no secret.
You are forgetting or don’t know that in Plateau state we the Hausa Fulani are minorities in Plateau state occupying about 2/3 of Jos North we historically found. Ask the British colonials what they found when they first came to Jos for Tin mining.
If it is so desirable that the islamophobic ideology and war against Islam and terror should be brought to the world most populous black nation Nigeria, then God help us all both Muslim and Christians. The architects (Bush, Tony lair and Condoleeza Rice) of Iraq and Afghanistan wars were here in Nigeria a couple of weeks ago and you have no idea what went behind the scene
(Apology, you may have idea). If the richest and most powerful nations on earth make conscious decision to ignite fire in Nigeria, no one can stop that and “what’s gonna be gonna be”.
Your statement is close what Greg Anyanting, the immediate past Plateau state police commissioner who told media briefing barely 24 hours from the start of January 2010 Jos crisis, that Muslims are guilty of instigating that crisis by attacking worshippers at Saint Michael Church. This was later confirmed as false even by an archbishop. That lead to massacre of almost a thousand Hausa-Fulani Muslims in Berom dominated areas. What impact your statement will make against the Muslims, only time will tell. What your statement and that of the Pope implies is that it ‘It is O.K to have Adolf Hitler in a Jang against the Muslim’ So the dictum Nazisms is only good if it targets Muslims.
Those pastoralists should be traced through the censor and family tree of those killed at Kuru Karama, Tim Tim, Sabon-garin Kanar, Gero etc. They should have Psychiatric evaluation and those found mentally fit to stand trial should be placed along the Beroms that committed similar acts and then prosecuted to logical conclusion. Justice and reconciliation can then follow.
I will be leaving Kuru Karama today after my pilgrimage to say farewell to soul of my kinsmen.
I hope you will learn something from seemingly illiterate person like me. Say Hi to Chelsea and Bye Bye.
Maikudi Amadu Mamman
The recent killings in Dogo Na Hauwa and three other villages in Plateau State have been described by the Christian- led govt of the state as a reprisal attack by the fulani pastoralists (Muslims) who were massacred earlier this year in January. This claim is not only false and baseless but funny. This same govt has failed to name a single person or group as suspect more than two months after the January genocide of the fulanis in Kuru Karama and Kuru Janta committed by the berom Christians. It is funny that the state gov. is now pointing fingers at the fulanis in less than 12 hrs of the incident in Dogo. Jang, first find those who massacred the Hausa/Fulanis in January this year before trying to acusse the fulanis of reprisal attack. By the way is it not the Book: "an eye for an eye". and "Do to others as you want other to do unto you."?
Yes,it is true that gen. gowon was deceived to fight against the biafrans,but we will not fold our arms and watch innocents souls waste away by these jihadists.This time the British and the Russian govt.that supported these jihadists 42years ago will distant them in this 21century.
We are ready to die, we are not afraid of any christian, this is the beginning . Our bombs are ready,our guns are ready and we too are ready to die so let jan be aware because we are cominmg to make jos into new alqaeeda.So let any christian pack from the state including the governor or else they will all die.This is a message from Usama ibn Laden to jan
Usama or whatever your name is, if you and your brothers are "ready to die," do yourselves a BIG favor and DIE because HELL is waiting for you if you DO NOT CHANGE your thinking and mission to take another life for whatever reason. Who made you the giver and taker of life? Death will come to you before you decide to take another.