Plateau State government carries out mass burial for 27 victims of Fulani herdsmen attack

PLATEAU State government officials have buried 27 victims of a recent Fulani cattle herdsmen attack in Nkiedonwhro village in Bassa Local Government Area in a mass grave amidst wailing and outpouring of emotions.

Yesterday, the village was attacked again at night while asleep by armed gunmen suspected to be Fulani herders. This latest murder is the third in the wave of attacks on the local government area since the state government imposed an indefinite dusk-to-dawn curfew in the area last Friday.

This latest incident followed a similar deadly attack in the same local government area on Saturday, leading to the deaths of six persons. Confirming yesterday's incident, the national president of Irigwe Development Association (IDA), Sunday Abdu, indicted that soldiers attached to the Special Task Force had gathered the villagers for the suspected herdsmen to kill.

He said the soldiers had gathered the victims in a primary school in the village to protect them from incessant attacks in the area, adding that while the soldiers occupied one classroom that they use as their operational base, the women and children occupied the next classroom. It is not yet clear though how the herdsmen still managed to carry out the attack with troops present.

Mr Abdu said: “How then did the attackers come and kill the women and children without the soldiers knowing. It is either that the soldiers are conniving with the attackers to annihilate our people or they ran away and left our people to their fate.

President Muhammadu Buhari said he received with deep sadness and regret, news of the killings which have been described as a reprisal perpetrated by suspected herdsmen. President Buhari's spokesman Mallam Garba Shehu, said the president instructed the military and the police to not only bring the violence to an instant end but to draw up a plan to ensure that there are no further attacks and reprisals by one group against the other.

He added: “This madness has gone too far. President Buhari is devoted to the sanctity of Nigeria’s unity and he encourages Nigerians of all groups to learn to live together in peace and harmony.”

Senator Jonah David Jang, the senator representing Plateau North, said he was sad to hear about the incessant violent killings going on in Bassa allegedly perpetrated by herdsmen who have become the usual suspects in this kind of coordinated attacks in the state and others in the Middle-Belt. He urged the state governor to review its response to the crisis as the current measure in place are not working.