Editorial
The 64 Plateau communities *A metaphor for the sad story called Nigerian
His mien betrayed his inner heart. There was no way anyone could miss it – Pain – anguish – sorrow – confusion – fear! – All registered in the face of Caleb Mutfwang, Governor of Plateau State, as each word tumbled out that Tuesday, April 8, 2025, while appearing on Channels Television.
Clearly, Shakespear obviously did not have the likes of the governor in mind when he wrote: “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face!” For in this particular case, that popular expressions from Macbeth, one of the writer’s most celebrated epics, was proved as fallacy rather than true.
A guest on Politics Today, a public affairs programme on the popular television network, the governor practically placed a mirror to expose every bit and pieces as well as the intricate fibres of his inner soul, as he detailed the harrowing ordeals of how merciless terrorists, unleashed mindless onslaughts on communities in the state, decimating his people in the process.
The most pungent part of that account, was how, in Bokkos local government alone, 64 communities were displaced, with the terrorists succeeding in chasing out original owners, renaming and occupying their communities.
Hear him: “To be honest with you, these attacks are not new. They’ve been going on for the last 10 years or more. It is just that they were never brought to national attention. In Bokkos particularly, Bokkos is one of God’s gift to Plateau State – beautiful landscape, great mineral deposits – but it is a very treacherous terrain. These communities that were recently attacked were part of the communities that were attacked in 2023. But they survived it, they rebuilt themselves. The Ruwi community that was first attacked, lost about 17 people in 2023.
“But they bounced back to show you the resilience of the people. Now, if this sort of attacks has been going on for close to 10 years, it tells the story that there is a deliberate, conscious attempts to clean out populations and for what reason other than to reoccupy.
“As I’m talking to you, there are not less than 64 communities that have been taken over by bandits on the Plateau between Bokkos, Barkin Ladi and Riom Local Governments. They have been taken over, renamed and people are living there conveniently, on lands they pushed people away to occupy.
“These are things we’ve been trying to embark on dialogue to make sure that these people return to their communities. But because of the proliferation of arms, which has become quite alarming – and I’m talking now, not about arms, but real, sophisticated arms in the hands of non-state actors. It has become more challenging for communities to be able to live in peace.”
But, here then was the catch. In this horrible narrative, the governor never brought himself to name the culprits of these attacks. He could not summon the courage to do so, despite his ostensibly full knowledge of story. Every effort to pressure him to name them, was futile.
See how he tried to dodge that bullet: “I can tell you in all honesty that I cannot find any explanation other than genocide, sponsored by terrorists. The question is who are the persons behind the organisers of this terrorism? This is what the security agencies must help us unravel. We must come to a point where we know the sponsors, because it is not just the work of ordinary people.”
Now, therein lies one of the major issues in the Plateau crisis and to a large extent that of Nigeria. No doubt, Mutfwang, not only knew the culprits, he also knew how and where to find them. But he would never bring himself to name them – he would never dare! The consequences would be too great for him. But, in place of clarity, he chose political correctness, while trading fear for courage and sacrifice.
In fact, Solomon Dalang, former Minister of Sports, who is also an indigene of the state and equally affected by the obvious siege, had some hours before, made the coast very clear. At a separate interview, he said the culprits were not only known, but their locations as well.
His take was that those who should arrest the crisis decisively – to pursue, decimate and wipe the killers out – had either deliberately refused to do so or were compelled to turn the other way. Otherwise, with the right intention and political will the menace would have since been over and forgotten.
What other evidence could have captured this audacious conclusion from the ex-Minister than the 64 communities Mutfwang spoke about?
If, as the governor said, these communities are actually in existence, with those who took them over living in them undisturbed and unperturbed, what other evidence does anyone need to fathom the agenda for the mass killing and for the inaction by higher authorities?
Why then dance and skirt around the issue? Ordinarily, the expectation is that Nigerian soldiers would have moved in, dislodged the invaders and restored the land to the original owners, while those so extricated would be profiled, and the guilty among them brought to book according to the law.
So, why is this not happening? Could it be that the spiritual dimension many people have talked about is truly at play after all? Yes! Not a few people have raised the Igbo question in the entire saga. Voices, understandably, from the South East, adducing this interesting, but germane angle, point to the horrendous activities of the progenitors of today’s victims in creating the Nigeria where their children and grandchildren have been trapped.
They describe both physical narratives and mental pictures of the ghoulish massacre of Ndigbo during the pogrom in Northern Nigeria, particularly in those areas currently witnessing these bloodbath, as evidence of the connection of the past and present, showing obvious similarities in their graphic constructs.
From Borno to Adamawa to Zamfara and Katsina – from Kaduna to Plateau and Benue, horrible depictions of morbid decapitation of human beings, portend the same or similar imprimatur of the gory pictures being spread in the same areas today, even several decades after.
The eerie images of young men with placid, emotionless faces – made so by years of carrying out the same task – making deep burrows in the ground and throwing what remained of the kits and kins, into them like dead animals killed by a deadly disease, replicate the same pictures of war-era Igboland after each bombing of markets, churches, hospitals and other public places while the dismissive and utterly bland, if not lame explanations by the military governments then to the wanton massacre, mimic the current stance of the Nigerian authorities to today’s persistent human carnages.
Indeed, many of the purveyors of this spiritual angle narrative, infer further, that the fact that those who supervised the bestial onslaught against Ndigbo, are alive today to see the same slaughter visited on their own kits, is evident that the current situation is a payback to atone the cries of the Igbo victims.
They contend that those loud cries and silent pleas of the victims – the pregnant women, whose bellies were torn open and their unborn babies ripped off – the young ladies corralled into leprosy colonies and forced to be raped by the inmates – the young children with their heads severed – their fathers pulled out from train coaches and vehicles and thrown into rivers – leave ghostly images of unsettled spirits refusing to rest until fully avenged.
There is no way of determining this spiritist angle. However, whatever picture or narrative – spiritual of temporal – the reality remains that the Plateau crisis is a very clear phenomenon. The essence, motive and impetus are captured in those 64 communities.
As the issue is neither complicated nor complex the solution is also straightforward. That it is not resolved yet and likely not to be soon, captures the sad story of Nigeria.
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
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