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The carnage has continued in Bokkos and other parts of Plateau State. Precious lives are being wasted; several orphans, widows and widowers are all over the place. The internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps are bursting at the seams. Please, government, end the carnage. Let there be lasting peace in the troubled communities.
In the midst of all these, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) is attracting “wailers” from troubled political parties seeking rehabilitation. While it is a big deal to be the beautiful bride, care must be taken to avoid vampires.
Bokkos are Nigerians too!
Back-to-back attacks on the sleepy community of Bokkos, Plateau State, on March 28 and April 2, 2025, left over 50 people dead. Over 30 of the dead were given a mass burial.
It was one out of several such brutal killings visited on the community since 2010.
The National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, who visited the community Monday, vowed never again. But such assurances appear familiar without the needed result.
As long as we throw our hands up in the air and send condolence messages and a few threats, and a few days later it recurs, people are not going to put their faith in the government.
There is an allegation that there could be some fifth columnists among the security agencies who feign tactical blindness when criminals are attacking a community, and security personnel would not show up until hours after massacres had been executed.
A particularly devastating example of such attacks was a series of deadly armed attacks that occurred between December 23 and 25, 2023, in at least 17 rural communities of Bokkos and Barkin Ladi. About 200 people were killed while over 500 others sustained various degrees of injuries.
The media is awash with a series of attacks that have also taken place in Bokkos after the December 2023 episode.
The people have continued to bury their loved ones.
Last Sunday, the convoy of the Secretary to the Plateau State Government, Samuel Jatau, was severely attacked by suspected terrorists in Bokkos. The SSG was on a visit to the area following the attacks the previous Wednesday.
For years, these attacks have continued in Plateau, Benue and some other states. Each time it happens, there would be a deluge of condemnation and outcry which fizzles away almost immediately.
While some people had blamed ethnicity and religion for fuelling the killings, Olisa Agbakoba, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), points fingers at the desperation of Nigerian politicians.
“It is not ethnicity or religion as we think; it may be about power. We underestimate how desperate a typical politician can get when he needs power. Don’t forget also that uncontrolled power can lead people to do a lot of unimaginable things. If you have a country, like ours, where people do not think about the welfare of others, that’s the reason for the chaos we see all over the place,” Agbakoba said.
Charles Omole, a lawyer and security consultant, said that lack of consequences for bad behaviours may have emboldened perpetrators of wanton killings in Nigeria.
He decried a situation where people commit heinous crimes and get away with them. He believes that if examples had been made of some of those who take joy in shedding the blood of innocent people in the country, the carnage could have been reduced.
The Nigerian government must not continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect a better result.
The fight against the killers in Plateau and other states must not be left for the state governments alone; it should be taken over by the federal government with the collaboration of state governments.
“There should be a combination of kinetic and non-kinetic approaches to tackle the insecurity menace,” Omole advised.
One major challenge here is loss of faith in the security operatives in Nigeria. Truth be told, the number of policemen in Nigeria is not enough to police the entire country. Therefore, the available number must be deployed reasonably.
Some people say many of the attacks were reprisal in nature, but in some cases, they are said to be unprovoked. Whichever is the case, those suffering it are innocent citizens.
The real cause of the recent attack on Bokkos communities is yet to be ascertained. But feelers from the people say it is a plot to sack them from their ancestral homes.
Like the cases in Kaduna, Zamfara and other states where bandits ride in a long convoy of motorcycles to attack communities, the recent attackers on Bokkos followed the same pattern.
Apart from the hapless motherless, fatherless, widows and widowers that these attacks create, the entire Nigerian society is bearing the brunt, as the killings have also deterred people from carrying out their farming activities, which has worsened the nation’s food crisis.
It is not just a matter for those who are directly facing the fire; we are all victims, unfortunately.
Can we justify this kind of brutal, reckless, and mindless attack where children and the elderly are massacred?
The government must do whatever is needed to end the frequent massacre, to the shame and frustration of anybody or those behind the killings.
All roads lead to SDP?
Two years ahead of the next round of a general election billed for 2027, politicians are already restless.
While the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its supporters are making their internal plans to consolidate, those in the opposition are engaging themselves in all manner of permutations and consultations.
These consultations seem to have given birth to a series of meetings, many of which are through proxies.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP) has been in the news lately over the moves by a number of prominent politicians in the country to curry its favour.
The activities and talk about 2027 began to gain momentum after the recent exit of former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, from the APC.
El-Rufai had left the broom party for the SDP. He met with Adewole Adebayo, the party’s presidential candidate in 2023, for a possible collaboration.
The former governor, who said that he dumped the APC because the party had first dumped him, also said that he was in talks with Atiku Abubakar, a former presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), to see the possibility of forging an alliance ahead of 2027.
Adebayo, on his own part, has remained the de facto leader of the SDP and has also disclosed that high-level discussions were underway with representatives of Atiku Abubakar and Obi over a potential defection to the SDP.
“People are joining my party, and we are welcoming them. You can see how active I am in welcoming them. The only little issue we have with some of them is changing the culture, especially if they have not been in an environment where rules are taken seriously,” he said.
According to him, “If they can stick to our culture and follow the way we do things in the SDP and produce a good alternative for Nigerians, we are going to manifestly defeat the APC and retire President Tinubu to Lagos or wherever he chooses to go in Nigeria.”
In a recent interview, Shehum Gabam, national chairman of the party, had warned that the party would not yield itself as a vehicle for selfish politicians.
While other political parties in Nigeria have since been hit by internal wrangling, the SDP seems not to have been bitten by the bug of crisis.
The PDP is oscillating from one trouble to another. The major challenge being that the party parades many prominent individuals who are “political hermaphrodites”; they are neither members nor opposition. They are in the party and acting like caterpillars that are eating away the fabrics of the party.
With the situation of the PDP today, it is difficult to say for sure that the party is ready to present a formidable candidate that could make an appreciable impact beyond its performance in 2023.
By the same token, the Labour Party (LP), which took Nigeria by storm in 2023, may have lost its charm as a result of leadership bickering. The enthusiasm with which Nigerians received the party before and during the election has drastically waned following the legal tussles that are yet to be resolved.
By and large, it would seem that a sizable number of those talking to the leadership of the APC for possible collaboration may be moved by personal gain above the good of the party, which is why Gabam warned them to keep their distance.
Observers expect the opposition to be more tactical and intentional if they hope to make any impact in 2027.
