Christian Jonathan’s mother was holding the 9-month-old boy in her arms when she was shot dead during an attack on her village in northwestern Nigeria. The assailants severed Christian’s finger and left him on the side of the road with a gunshot wound to his tiny leg.
“He was left on the ground next to his mother’s body,” said Joshua Jonathan, Christian’s father. “They thought the child was dead”.
The April night attack in Runji, Kaduna state, left 33 dead, most of them burned alive or shot dead. Many more have since been killed in ongoing clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farming communities in the northwestern and central regions of the West African nation, including more than 100 this month in Plateau state.
The decades-old violence is getting deadlier, killing at least 2,600 people in 2021, based on the most recent data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Once armed with sticks, the groups now fight with weapons that have been smuggled into the country.
Both sides accuse the government of injustice and marginalization, but the clashes have also taken on a religious dimension, giving rise to militias siding with mostly Muslim herders or farmers from Christian communities.
The growing security crisis presents a major challenge for Nigeria’s incoming president, Bola Tinubu, who has risen to power in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and one of the leading oil producers, vowing to improve the lives of affected communities and address the root causes of the crisis by providing jobs and ensuring justice. Tinubu takes office on Monday.
If the violence is not stopped, analysts say, it could further destabilize the country and push more of its 216 million people into poverty. UN agencies say the violence mainly affects children, who are already threatened by malnutrition, and women, who are often kidnapped and forced into marriage.
Security forces’ response can be slow and arrests are rare, leading an increasing number of communities to fight back when under siege.
“There is a substantial loss of trust in the government as a protector of citizens,” said Nnamdi Obasi, senior adviser for Nigeria at the International Crisis Group. Obasi warned that Failure of the incoming administration to quickly resolve the conflict will lead to “more people seeking self-defense, more weapons proliferation, more criminal groups, and an increase in organized armed groups.”
In Runji, an agricultural town, The Associated Press spoke with some survivors in hospital beds and others touring a mass grave and their razed homes. They said they were under attack for hours and the gunmen fled long before security forces arrived.
Every home carries a scar.
Christopher Dauda’s family was trying to escape when the gunmen caught up with his wife and four children, killing all five of them. Danjuma Joshua’s two daughters were shot in the back as they tried to flee. At the home of Asabe Philip — who survived with burns all over her body — assailants burned five children alive as they huddled in a room.
Christian’s aunt has tried to fill the void left by his mother’s murder. Her father said that the baby cries a lot and hardly sleeps, although his physical injuries are gradually healing.
“We try to make do with what we have left,” Joshua Jonathan said.
On the other side of the conflict, herders say they are also under attack. They complain of cattle rustling and extrajudicial killings by local security groups working as community watchmen.
Abdullahi Bello Bodejo, president of the national herders’ association, denied that anyone in the group was responsible for the violence. Most of the herders belong to the Fulani, an ethnic group.
“The Fulanis are not the murderers. Anyone who carries out murder is not our member. Sometimes when communities accuse us of killing, 75% is not true; they have their own crisis, but they always blame the fulanis”Bodejo said.
Nigerian security forces say they have arrested dozens of gunmen and recovered their weapons. But the raiders are estimated to number in the thousands and can easily recruit new members, according to Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, a conflict researcher.
“There is a limit to kinetic (military) operations, as it does not address the socio-economic problem that gave rise to banditry in the region in the first place,” said Oluwole Ojewale of the Africa-focused Institute for Security Studies. He said the incoming Tinubu administration must work with state governments to address unemployment, poverty and social injustice.
The recent violence has led to the formation of community, state and regional security teams that experts say could create major problems for Nigeria’s security architecture if not properly controlled.
And their recruits are young.
Felix Sunday, a university student from Kaduna, said he was 16 when he joined a local vigilante group in 2021 and finds it hard to combine night watch with his studies.
In much of West and Central Africa, porous national borders make it easy to smuggle weapons. A survey-based report published in 2021 by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, in collaboration with the Nigerian government, found that at least 6 million firearms could be in the hands of civilians in the country at that time.
The army and police recovered hundreds of firearms in Nigeria last year, but dealers elsewhere are exacerbating the problem.
“Things have gotten considerably worse. Some are big military weapons imported from other countries,” said Confidence MacHarry of Lagos-based security firm SBM Intelligence.
Armed with sophisticated weapons, attackers have launched daring assaults on areas with a strong security presence, including a military base and an airport in Kaduna, suggesting that the motivation of the security forces themselves may be the problem.
Survivors of the Plateau attack told the AP that police arrived until the next day, echoing comments from people living in Runji, which has a nearby security checkpoint.
“After the attackers have left, the soldiers come. Even if we hear (the attackers) coming and inform the government, they don’t take proactive measures,” said Simon Njam, a vigilante leader near Runji who uses locally made bows, arrows and weapons to protect the area.
Part of the problem is that security forces are disorganized and unprepared to respond to attacks.according to Kabir Adamu, founder of Beacon Consulting, a security company based in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
“We don’t have a coordinated security sector that identifies and counters threats,” he said. “They need to work together to protect lives and right now, we’re not seeing enough of that.”
As more families mourn the loss of loved ones, forced to replace farmland with cemeteries, their priority is to demand justice.
“How can people come and kill without anything happening?” Dauda asked Runji, recalling his life with his wife and four children. “It can’t bring back my lost family, but the government can at least rebuild my home and ensure justice.”
(with information from AP)
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Source-www.infobae.com