Thursday 18 March 2010

BEROM GENOCIDE IN JOS,NIGERIA

7TH OF MARCH 2010 ZOT AND DOGO-NAHAWA BEROM VILLAGES,JOS




















These disturbing eye-witness accounts are of the genocidal attacks on Berom people
taking place in Nigeria's Plateau state- mostly the villages surrounding the city of Jos.
The Berom are close to 400 000 in populace in and are the indigeneous inhabitants of Jos and surrounding
villages in Plateau State.They are being systematically wiped out from their fertile ancestral lands- a resource
which of some extremist Hausa-Fulani politicians are now resorting to mass murder to acquire.
The attackers of the Berom are Hausa-Fulani followers of extremist islamic ideologies. Religion
is being used as a pretext to massacre innocent victims-women,children and infants.
A blatantly genocidal strategy,a culling of the future Berom population.
The nigerian government has been disgracefuly inefficient at intervening in this
situation,and in fact the army guards that have been deployed to protect the Berom have been found complicit in their murder.Members of the army have been selling uniforms and weapons to the Hausa-Fulani militia.
The villages of Zot,Rastat and Dogo-Nahawa were attacked on the 7th of March 2010,leaving
no less than 500 people dead.Most were women,children and babies.
This week the residents of Biye and Batem villages in Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State have fled into Jos city following a new attack in the early hours of the 17th of March.
13 people, most of them women and children have been gruesomely murdered and several others injured.
A pregnant woman was burnt with a baby on her back while others had either machete wounds on their heads or gunshot wounds on their chests.
The commission of enquiry on the crisis headed by lawyer and former minister of justice, Bola Ajibola recommended that the police be made to investigate the activities of some prominent persons in the state, including former Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu, Alhaji Saleh Hassan, Sheik Yahaya Jengre,Malam Samaila Mohammed, as well as Jos' former Minister of Information Alhaji Dasuki Ibrahim Nakande, saying their utterances before and after the crisis were capable of igniting more Hausa-Fulani attacks on the Berom population and their possible retaliation.It is particularly worrying that the attacks continue to occur despite a curfew that the army deployed for protection is meant to be enforcing.
The Nigerian government has repeatedly failed to implement the recommendations of Bola Ajibola.The failure to protect Nigerian citizens is gradually, but surely eroding the confidence in the government’s ability to intervene in the matter.Despite the scale of this crisis the Nigerian government has still not declared a state of emergency.
With the new realisation that the army has been selling uniforms and guns to the Hausa-Fulani Militias,the Berom are now having to organise themselves in to vigilante groups to protect their communities.There is a fear that their attackers will return.The situation urgently requires international intervention and mediation.Though the United Nations is informed ,they have still not acted.It cannot be that the lessons of Bosnia and Rwanda have been forgotten.



17TH OF MARCH 2010 BIYE AND BATEM BEROM VILLAGES,RIYOM JOS















THIS BLOG WILL CONTINUE TO POST EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS
OF THE ONGOING ATTACKS ON THE BEROM POPULATION.