Date Published: 01/21/10

JOS RIOTS AND REGIME OF HATE CRIMINALS By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Most Nigerians and foreign observers have lost count of how many times that trigger-happy hoodlums and machete-wielding religious terrorists and bigots have unleashed a reign of maximum chaos and an orgy of bloody violence on tens –of- thousands of innocent Nigerians in Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Bauchi, Borno and lately Jos, Plateau State leading to the mass murder of several thousands of persons because of inexplicable religious-motivated hate crime. Nigerians and foreign observers are also shocked that in the last ten years that nearly twenty thousand Nigerians lives have been wasted by local religious terrorists, no significant number of persons known as sponsors and actors in these hate crimes have faced prosecution and punished for their ignominious roles in the mass murder that we have witnessed. The questions to ask are; why is the law enforcement mechanism broken down so irretrievably that it has become impossible to charge suspected mass murderers before the competent courts of law and get them convicted and punished for these hate crimes perpetrated in the name of religion? Why has the intelligence gathering capacity of members of the Nigerian security community so eroded that the operatives of these agencies of government are absolutely unable to proactively prevent the breakdown of law and order and the numerous religious-motivated hate crimes? Another question begging for an answer is; has the Nigeria police become so compromised that the police operatives responsible for the investigations of all these religious -motivated killings all across most Northern Nigerian cities and in some few Southern cities where reprisals have taken place, have failed to discharge their duties to Nigeria? We will return to attempt answering these posers.

Nigerians were shocked to hear the sad story that on January 17 th 2010 precisely on a Sunday morning when Christian worshippers proceeded to fulfil their religious obligation in their Churches that a group of gun-wielding youths identified by the Plateau State commissioner of police as Islamic fundamentalists attacked them and burnt down some Churches even as some of these persons who were attacked were compelled to defend themselves leading to the total breakdown of law and order and the mass murder of over twenty human persons. The Guardian reporter in Jos, Plateau State reported that the latest killings in Jos started when a Muslim man in Nasarawa Gwom- Jos whose property was burnt in the November 2008 riots wanted to rebuild but other residents claimed that he had trespassed into their own land leading to skirmishes that degenerated into religious riot. The Christian elders Association headed by Bishop Andersen Bok gave their accounts of how the latest mass killings of human persons in Jos started; ‘’Our fellow brothers and sisters were just coming out of Churches in Nasarawa area of Jos when some Islamic youth pounced on them with cutlasses and other dangerous weapons... why must it be Churches and Christians who will suffer from an all-Muslim infighting...?

Whether we choose to believe the account by the police commissioner or the other by The Guardian reporter on the cause of the latest rounds of mass murder in Plateau State or not, the important thing is that dastardly acts of hate crimes and mass murder have taken place and the perpetrators of these heinous and cowardly acts of killing fellow human beings must be arrested, thoroughly investigated, fool proof evidence generated and comprehensive and effective prosecution commenced in the full view of most Nigerians so that the court of competent jurisdiction can hand out the most appropriate punishment to these suspected mass murderers.

To reply to the questions earlier raised regarding the show of gross incompetence of the investigating police operatives who have all the while failed to bring the perpetrators of all the previous religious riots in parts of Northern Nigeria to successful trials, one can say that it is a simple sign that Nigeria is experiencing systemic collapse of her apparatus of efficient and effective law enforcement mechanism. The danger in the governments at every level especially at the Federal level allowing the consistent erosion of the competence of the law enforcement operatives and the consequent systemic failure of the nation’s law enforcement apparatus is that most Nigerians will lose faith  in the Nigeria Police Force and may resort to self help measures to protect themselves from the constant attacks by hate criminals who are enjoying the current situation of free regime of anarchy and impunity that exist all across Nigeria.

It is even shocking that soon after the November 2008 riots in Jos during which over four hundred human lives were wasted by local terrorists who were protesting the Jos-North local council poll, both the Federal and Plateau State governments empanelled or established two separate and opposing judicial commissions of inquiry on the same November 2008 riots. It is a fact that the action of the Federal and Plateau state Governments in setting up two separate judicial panels on the same matter sent a dangerous signal that the chief executives of both levels of Governments were divided along ethnic and religious lines meaning that while President Umaru Musa Yar’adua was perceived as seeking to defend the interest of his Muslim brothers and sisters in Plateau state, Governor Jonah Jang was out to defend his Christian brothers and sisters. The wife of the president also added a new dimension to the November 2008 riots in Jos when she allegedly paid a solidarity visit to the internally displaced camp housing mostly Muslim victims of the Jos-North riots but failed to visit another camp housing mostly Christians and Southerners displaced as a result of the riots. This is not how to handle religious motivated hate crimes because when government officials by their words and actions show the perpetrators that they would be protected so long as they belong to the religious community of these political office holders, then the regime of hate criminals will continue for a long time to come and may lead to a nation-wide implosion if care is not taken because evil begets evil.

The way to handle the intermittent riots and mass killings all across Nigeria is for the Police to strengthen and build effective and effective capacity and skills in their operatives charged with the duty of investigating these hate crimes so that good and qualitative evidences could be gathered and for the judiciary to expeditiously handle these matters as of high priority especially because of the perception in the international arena that Nigeria supports terrorism. The security community must act proactively.

+Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria.