Nigeria, Blood and Crucifixion on The Plateau.

By Mathew Hassan Kukah

By the banks of the Niger river, on the hills of the Plateau, across the lush savannahs of the Middle Belt, we have sat down and wept. We have questions crying for answers: Who are these killers? Where are they coming from? Who is sponsoring them? What are their grouses and against whom? What do they want? Whom do they want? Who are they working for? When will it all end? Why are they invincible and invisible? Who is offering them cover?

Those invisible men came to the Plateau again, bearing their gifts of death and destruction. They came from the deepest pit of hell, the habitat of the devils that they are. They are children of darkness, sons of Satan. They opted to extinguish and snatch the light of the joy of Christmas from thousands of people on the Plateau.

They imagined they would ignite an orgy of blood, seduce the ordinary peace-loving people of the Plateau and set them on a mission of mindless murder of fellow citizens in the name of retaliation. The world would then say that this is was a war of religion – Christians killing Muslims – to ignite a larger war. So far, over two hundred lives are gone and we are still counting, but what next, where next, and who next?

Over the years, these murderers have left their footprints of blood and tears across the length and breadth of the entire northern states, indiscriminately wrecking destruction across large swathes of land and communities. In all this, the Nigerian state and its security agencies are blind-sided, seemingly incapable of cleaning up this augean stable of sorrow and pain in our land.

These killers have turned the Nigerian state and its security agencies into objects of cynicism, mockery and mere lachrymal spectators daily accompanying funeral processions. Across the country, these funerals and the coffins are now part of our landscape.

We are gradually taking eerie solace in the fact that these killers do not respect the bou