Jos Killings: When Will The Madness Stop? — Isa Isawade 
Published on September 6, 2010 by TheNEWS · No Comments
Isa-Isawade
In the early hours of Sunday 7 March 2010, depraved marauders said to be nomadic Fulani ‘Muslims’ simultaneously invaded the Christian-dominated villages of Dogo-Nahawa, Ratsat and Kamang in Shen district of Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria, brutally killing over 500 Christians, mostly women, children and the aged! The attack was, allegedly, retributive justice for the Sunday 17 January, 2010 attacks at Kuru-Karama and Kuru-Jemeta, in which both the Christian indigenes and nomadic Fulani Muslims suffered casualties.
In the senseless vengeful attack, victims who attempted to run for dear life were struck down by arrows and brutally macheted to death while houses were surrounded and set ablaze by the rampaging killers. The loss of life and property was monumental because the able-bodied men in the villages had earlier been tricked away by a misleading message deliberately spread by the perpetrators that a far away village was about to be attacked and that all men should go lend a helping hand. Eager to be their brother’s keeper, they trooped there, only to return the following day to meet their wives, children and aged parents hacked to death and their houses and other property burnt to ashes.
While the frightening tales and gory pictures of the massacre sent the nation into grief and mourning, the bloodthirsty beasts were strangely unmoved. And to show how unrepentant they are, the dastardly act is not only being replicated with impunity, but also in quick succession. What skins of dried wood and hearts of stone!
Barely a week after the massacre, precisely on Wednesday 17 March, armed men in military uniform launched another deadly attack on Dye village in Riyom Local Government Area of the state, killing ten people and injuring several others. On Monday 5 April, a Christian was killed by unidentified men in one of the villages. Again, on Thursday 15 April, burnt bodies of a pastor, Ishaya Kadah and Selina his wife, who had been kidnapped by some Muslim fanatics two days earlier in Bauchi were discovered. The incident would have escalated into a bloody conflict between the two religious groups but for the prompt deployment of a heavy detachment of policemen to the village.
The most recent of the series of attacks was on Mazah community in Jos North Local Government Area, when nomadic Fulani, in the early hours of Saturday 17 July, 2010 killed several people––again, mostly women and children––and destroyed property worth several millions of naira. Vehicles and houses, including the Church of Christ in Nigeria, COCIN, in the village were torched.
A pastor of COCIN, Nuhu Dauwat managed to escape into the bush through the back door of his house. But by the time he returned, he met his wife, two children and a grandson hacked to death. A councilor representing Mazah Ward, Hon. Kankani Jaja’s personal and family houses were burnt and his parents and son killed. Another survivor, Gaya Suna said he escaped into the bush but his daughter, who was deep asleep, was hacked to death by the assailants.
Another pastor, whose mother, wife and children were butchered, recounting the ordeal in an interview with a magazine shortly after the incident, said: “On Saturday at about 1.30 am, I heard my dog barking and I woke up, came outside the house and looked round. Suddenly, I heard loud gunshots. The gunshots woke up my family members and they were confused and they kept asking what was going on. When I realised that they [the marauders] had entered my apartment, I quickly sneaked out and hid myself inside the maize farm. My family members became confused and they were calling my name, ‘daddy, daddy’ and that was all. I was helpless in the farm and could not attempt to do anything. I saw all things that the attackers were doing to my family until they finished their operations. After they had finished slaughtering my wife and our two children, they started burning everything in the house, including food items. At that point, there was a little boy of about four years who was not touched then. He was crying and calling my wife, ‘Mummy, mummy, mummy, come and carry me, don’t allow them to beat me,’ not knowing they had killed my wife then. So he became tired––I guess so because I could no longer hear his voice––and I thought, fire must have consumed him then.”
All the scary tales told by survivors of the acts of lunacy––supported by terrifying pictures of horror and human decapitation––reek of unfathomable insensitivity and luciferic ingenuity of unimaginable proportion. What heartlessness!
Since the massacre of 7 March, it has been very difficult for me to take my mind off the highly horrific pictures of innocent children and women clubbed, macheted and set ablaze by the satanic beasts. The most horrific, which sends shivers down my spine whenever I think about it, are the pictures of the charred remains of a little girl around the age of my daughter––less than 4 years old––who had a deep machet cut on the back of her head and a sharp iron rod thrust into her stomach, ripping out her intestines, before she was set ablaze; and a woman who had two machete cuts on her hand and the back of her head but managed to run to safety, from where she was rushed to a hospital by good Samaritans. She was to later realise that as she was being macheted, her five-month-old baby strapped to her back was also being struck. Though she survived, the baby’s head had been slashed into two almost equal halves! What demonic inhumanity to a child! What bestiality! What barbarism! What savagery! The children God loves most are what the blood-sucking monsters passionately hate.
What offence have these children committed to deserve the violence cruelly visited on them? None, beyond being innocently born into a particular tribe or religion. And certainly, anyone who considers such circumstances of birth a crime is challenging God who created man and decreed that he (man) should multiply into nations. Allah (S.W.T) reminded Prophet Muhammed (S.A.W) about this in Qur’an chapter 11 verse 118 thus: If thy Lord had so willed, He could have made mankind one people. But they will not cease to differ.
I feel diminished as a human being by these unchecked debasement and destruction of fellow human beings.
More than two months after the killings of 7 March, I had my sleep murdered every night by the memory of pictures of mutilated bodies of children and vulnerable women. Every night I remembered that was how those unsuspecting children and women laid to sleep to have their deserved rest when suddenly the pleasure of their sleep was painfully cut short by the unwarranted invasion of the demented beasts who murdered them and set their belongings ablaze. Also, each time I woke up in the morning and sighted my daughter, I remembered that disturbing picture of the charred body of her agemate who was gruesomely killed and set ablaze by the animals called men.
When will these satanic attacks end? Only when the evil perpetrators and their sponsors are brought to book to serve as deterrent. But what could be the motivation for the killings and arson? I have heard people talk of ethnicity and religion as reasons for the dastardly acts. To this, I want to state here categorically with no iota of ambiguity that, for either of the aforestated reasons or any other reasons whatsoever, the acts are senseless, irrational, unreasonable, untenable, ungodly, at variance with civilisation and inimical to the development of any nation. Hence, it should not only be condemned by all, but also maximally punished by the appropriate authorities.
If the motive is to carry out ethnic cleansing, the perpetrators of these ignoble acts are big fools and demented minds. Those who know history should enlighten them that no ethnic cleansing act has ever succeeded in wiping out an ethnic group anywhere in the world. It has not only succeeded in temporarily wreaking havoc on the victims but invited eternal shame and deadly repercussions on the perpetrators and their succeeding generations.
Remind them of the killing of Muslims in Mecca by the pagans just after Prophet Muhammed (S.A.W) announced Islamic monotheism to the world. Today, the population of Muslims all over the world is over a billion. Heal them of their ignorance or amnesia with the story of the violence waged against Muslims in Bosnia. Lecture them with the story of the Israelis – despite the victimisation and killings they suffered in the several continents they have migrated to, they have not only continued to exist, they now have a country for themselves and have become a power to reckon with in the world today. This is why I would appeal to Israel to immediately stop killing the Palestinians as the hostility will never lead any of the warring parties to any good but continue to create perpetual unrest in Israel.
Tell the Jos killers about Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo. Tell them about Ethiopia and Eritrea. Tell them about apartheid in South Africa. Tell them about the many examples around us. Tell them to stop the unfruitful and uncivilised act.
If the motive has to do with religion, I am using this opportunity to tell the killers that their act is totally satanic, unpardonable by God (unless they repent) and totally against the tenets of Islam. The Almighty Allah in Q.5:32 says: We ordained for the children of Israel that if anyone slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people; and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.
Also, when the enemies of Islam realised that the continued persecution, killing and destruction of followers of Prophet Muhammed (S.A.W) and their property could not deter the Muslims from the practice of their religion, they (the enemies) raised an army of over 3,000 armed men and 300)fighter horses with the sole aim of exterminating the Muslims so as to totally erase Islam on the surface of the earth. The Prophet (S.A.W) then told his followers that even though the total number of Muslims at that time was not up to the number of enemy soldiers who were up in arms against them, Allah would give the Muslims victory if they prayed to the only God and followed the rules he was about to lay down for them in their quest to defend their lives. According to one of the most reliable and widely accepted Hadiths (books of traditions) of the Holy Prophet (S.A.W), Hadith Al-Bukhari, the prophet declared to his followers:
In the name of Allah and in the way of Allah, fight against those who blaspheme Him. Behold! Commit no breach of promise, nor of trust, nor kill their children, women, old men on the verge of death, nor the recluse in the hermitage, and do not cut down date trees, nor demolish any building.
Those are the rules to be strictly observed in war situations as laid down by Allah (S.W.T) and His Prophet (S.A.W). But to show how ungodly and anti-Islam the Jos killers were, they violated all these rules. They killed children, women, and the aged. They burnt houses and destroyed other property. They even tricked the men in the village away so as to freely kill the children and women without hindrance! I swear by Allah, if those murderers were Muslims, they ceased to be Muslims the moment they started killing children and women, and surely hell fire is their final abode unless they repent now and atone for their sins.
They also allegedly claimed they perpetrated and continue to perpetrate the act for revenge! Hear the Prophet’s verdict which was delivered during his last hajj sermon to all the people across Arabia as contained in the Hadith: Behold! All practice of the days of ignorance are now under my feet. Your blood, your property and your honour are as sacred as this day, this month and this city. Abolished also is the practice of spilling blood for revenge. Verily you will soon meet your Lord and you will be held answerable for your actions.
The following should be held responsible for this heinous crime against humanity. The Federal Government of Nigeria, which alone controls all the security apparatus of the country, and its principal officials; the two chambers of the National Assembly and all the state Houses of Assembly who have irresponsibly abandoned Jos people to their fate; all agencies and their principal agents charged with the duties of information, vigilance, law enforcement and security of life and property but shirked such responsibility, are all as guilty as the actual perpetrators and their despicable sponsors.
All Islamic scholars and civilised Muslims who ought to have been organising sensitisation programmes and protests to condemn the anti-Islamic killings but instead chose to keep quiet in the face of this show of madness that is giving Islam a bad image should know that they will all be held answerable on the day of judgment. And all those who condemned the vicious acts in public but thumbed-up the perpetrators behind closed doors are themselves despicable and shall receive their rewards.
All civil groups, religious organisations, pressure groups, human rights organisations, labour unions and non-governmental organisations which have not deemed it fit to stage rallies and industrial action to demand justice for Jos people are not doing justice to humanity. Cursed also is the whole country and her citizens who reprehensibly pretend as if all is well with us and show no concern for the plight of the beleaguered Jos indigenes but instead devote attention to less important engagements such as politicking, beauty and fashion events, National (dis)honour awards and independence anniversary jamboree.
All the above mentioned persons and parties shall eternally remain guilty of the cold-blooded murder of those innocent children and women unless and until all the culprits and their sponsors are brought to book. The blood of the massacred is crying for justice and unless justice is done the favour of God may elude this country.
– Mallam Isa Isawade is an indigene of Gbongan, Osun State and can be reached on ajaodefunmi@yahoo.co.uk