Soldiers Belatedly Come to the Rescue, Refuse to Answer Media Queries
By Masara Kim
[Jos] Six people have been killed since TruthNigeria published an advance warning of impending terror attacks in Plateau State. Among the victims are four civilian guards who made the ultimate sacrifice after local police and military forces failed to respond to the threats in a farming area just 42 miles south of the capital, Jos.
On October 13, TruthNigeria alerted residents to the vulnerability of 18 villages across five neighboring local government areas, similar to counties in the United States.
Just minutes after the alert went live at around 2 p.m. Eastern Time [7 p.m. in Nigeria], terrorists targeted a young man on a motorcycle coming from one of the listed villages, Maikatako, in Bokkos County. An hour later, another attack was launched in a different community 20 miles away in Riyom County, also cited in the warning.
As residents were settling in for the evening at 7 p.m. locally on October 14, hoping to avoid a similar situation, a barrage of automatic gunfire erupted in a small village southwest of Maikatako.
TruthNigeria reported about the shootings while residents were still ducking for cover.
Four civilian guards stationed at a hilltop watch post were the first victims of the moonlit assault in Rafut — part of a cluster of villages known as Tarangol, located in the Kwatas district which was highlighted in the TruthNigeria alert. The assailants then invaded a nearby compound of three brick buildings, killing an elderly man before fleeing into the surrounding cornfields, TruthNigeria learned.
‘Allahu Akhbar’ [‘God is great’ in Arabic]
Minutes before the attack, 23-year-old ThankGod Ayuba received a phone call to join the watch team on the Rafut’s southwestern edge. Armed only with a pocketknife and a slingshot, Ayuba agreed to be part of a five-man team taking the turn for the first few hours of the night. However, as they moved toward their post under the nearly full moon, they were ambushed by a hail of gunfire.
“We literally met them there,” Ayuba told TruthNigeria. “They took position close to the post before we arrived,” said Ayuba, the sole survivor of the guard-post attack.
“I fell into a gutter on the hill while attempting to run and that seemed to have helped me,” Ayuba said.
“Right before my eyes, my four comrades fell, and I literally crawled under flying bullets till I reached a brick wall some 40-50 meters away” Ayuba told TruthNigeria.
“They chased after me with heavy shooting. While running after me, they spotted a 90-year-old man struggling to run into his room in his compound and shot him,” Ayuba said.
200 meters away on Rafut’s eastern edge of town, guard commander Godwin Zacharia was running with three team members in the direction of the shooting but was confronted by another squad of gunmen.
“We were moving and taking cover behind brick buildings and later relaxed when we heard a brief silence, thinking they had left,” Zacharia told TruthNigeria.
“I even told the other team members to take a different direction while I took the northern route,” Zacharia said. “Suddenly I heard gunshots and ran into the nearby corn farms,” Zacharia recalled. “They chased me right into the farms and another group stayed back in the town shooting while another attempted to set fire on a house where some residents had run into,” Zacharia narrated.
“It was then that I realized the invading force was probably up to 15,” he said, noting the attackers spoke the Fulani dialect, shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar’ as they fired into residences.
Terrorists suffer casualty
The Fulani tribe – one of Africa’s largest –is known across West Africa for their cattle herding and historical involvement in regional jihad wars. They have been linked to thousands of massacres in Nigeria. According to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, the Fulani have been responsible for over 50,000 murders in the last four years. In Plateau State alone, Amnesty International reports that the Fulani were responsible for the deaths of more than 1,300 Christians between December 23, 2023, and February 2024.
Despite being outgunned and outnumbered, Zachariah’s team managed to draw blood with their pipe guns from the invaders, forcing them to retreat. This ultimately saved the remaining 300 residents before soldiers arrived from their base 5 miles away.
“If not for the prior alert we received since Saturday, which enabled us to prepare ahead, the damage would have been worse,” Zachariah said, crediting TruthNigeria.
“We didn’t see any of their corpses, but we saw blood stains on the tracks they fled through,” he said. He reasoned that the terrorists had waded through a shallow stream encircling Rafut before launching the surprise attack from surrounding cornfields.
Local people rescue young traveler
The battle in Rafut was not isolated. Just the day prior, on Oct. 12, local residents armed with sticks and slingshots saved the life of 20-something Yelwa Sunday Mashat who found himself trapped on his motorcycle between a herd of 500 cattle and armed Fulani militants near Rafut.
Mashat was chased by a group of three Fulani men armed with machetes just 2 miles north of the Plateau State University Bokkos, at approximately 7 p.m. locally.
TruthNigeria learned the gang herded their cattle into a bumpy dirt road linking the market town of Maikatako and Mashat’s village of Folloh, trapping him in a bend.
Faced with no path to gun his bike, Mashat jumped off his motorcycle and ran but was caught and overpowered by the gang. Local residents came to his rescue as Mashat was being slashed with machetes, but he got quick medical attention that day.
20 miles away in the village of Jol, in the Riyom county, community leader Danladi Mwagon was not so lucky.
A group of Fulani-speaking terrorists opened gunfire in a compound of two brick buildings at 8 p.m. local time, killing Mwagon as he stood guard outside following TruthNigeria’s text alert by cellphone. (The formal security alert was posted at TruthNigeria.com on Sunday, Oct. 13.)
‘We cannot stand idly by’
Despite the reported threats, soldiers of Operation Safe Haven (OPS), a military task force including police and paramilitary units assigned to protect three adjoining states of Plateau, Kaduna and Bauchi, failed to make deployments to the areas identified as vulnerable by TruthNigeria.
Matta Danladi, the youth leader of Tarangol, told TruthNigeria, minutes prior to the invasion of Rafut, he personally made phone calls to battalion headquarters of OPS in Bokkos at the Sector 5 center, requesting for troops in Rafut. However, soldiers did not arrive until the assailants had retreated, TruthNigeria learned. This prompted civilian residents to defend themselves with locally made pipe guns, slingshots, and machetes whereas attackers carried assault rifles that cost as much as $1,000 each on the black market.
“We cannot stand idly by and watch as terrorists from hundreds of miles away slaughter and displace us to take over our communities,” wrote tribal lawyer Farmasum Fuddang.
“This long-term agenda has been systematically and more vigorously executed in recent months, resulting in the deaths of over 400 of our members since the Christmas attacks on 26 of December,” wrote Fuddang in a statement.
“Despite credible warnings by a reputable media outlet on October 13, terrorists, identified by witnesses as members of the Fulani tribe, launched a brutal attack on the village of Rafut in the Kwatas district shortly after 7 PM on October 14,” Fuddang wrote, acknowledging TruthNigeria’s terror alert.
“This unprovoked assault occurred even after a security meeting with police and military authorities in Bokkos on October 13,” he wrote.
Mr. Titus Alams, a former Speaker of the Plateau State Legislature who hails from the area assaulted Oct 3 shared similar concerns.
“Those young men were all killed when they were out to protect that place amid rumors of an impending attack,” Alams told TruthNigeria.
“They communicated to the security agencies that the community was going to be attacked but had to face it themselves,” Alams said in a telephone interview.
“But you saw how porous that place is,” Alams said.
“Not a single military base is present in the whole of that area which comprises more than five large villages,” Alams told TruthNigeria.
“By the time soldiers could navigate the bad terrain and come from faraway Bokkos, the damage had been done,” Alams stated, echoing calls for self-defense.
“No nation can be secured by the military alone,” he said. “The Civil people must watch their communities as well,” he noted.
Both Major Samson Zhakom, the spokesman for the Nigerian army in Jos and Deputy Superintendent of Police Alfred Alabo, the spokesman for the Nigerian Police in Plateau State have yet to respond to queries from TruthNigeria.
Masara Kim is a conflict reporter in Jos and a senior editor at TruthNigeria.
