Military Arrives Two Hours Late, Drawing Charges of Army Complicity
By Masara Kim
(Jos) As dignitaries from Abuja and around the world gathered in Katsina on July 15 to bury former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, residents of Plateau State were left to sift through the charred remains of their homes, searching for loved ones slaughtered in 12 hours earlier by jihadist terrorists.
The atrocity in the village of Bindi, a majority Christian village a few miles south of the metropolis of Jos, may rank as another highpoint of cruelty in the wave of killings often called Nigeria’s Christian Genocide.
By 3 p.m. local time, Riyom authorities confirmed that 27 bodies had been identified, including a three-year-old girl and nine family members related to a local pastor burned alive in their home. TruthNigeria learned the early morning attack on the peaceful village of Bindi in Riyom County (Local Government Area) followed weeks of intense firefights between heavily armed terrorists and civilian defenders using rudimentary, single-shot guns – while local military garrisons stood down, according to locals speaking to TruthNigeria.
A Pastor’s Ordeal
The air was a chilling 55 degrees Fahrenheit at 3 a.m. on July 15 in Bindi, a typically cold temperature for the sparsely forested Riyom County. Rev. Davou Musa, pastor of a 300-member congregation, heard gunshots in his backyard and rushed out into his compound of two brick buildings to investigate. Unbeknownst to him, he was about to witness the horrifying slaughter of nine of his family members sleeping in the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) Bindi residence.
Just nine hours earlier, Rev. Musa had been assured of protection by the commander of a large forward operating base (FOB) located just two miles away. This followed his personal report of suspicious movements to the Sector 6 Command of Operation Safe Haven, a joint military task force in Plateau State.
“If only I knew they would fail, I would have told [my family members] to flee into the surrounding cornfields; perhaps they would have been alive,” Rev. Musa told TruthNigeria.
“I felt safe that soldiers were around because they came around 6 p.m. [on July 14] on two pickup trucks and even fired their machine guns in the air,” Rev. Musa recounted.
“But alas, nine innocent people, including relatives who thought they had found a safe place after being displaced from surrounding villages, were burned in my house.” Musa described a horrifying attack by more than 30 armed men who swarmed his house.
“They broke the entrance door and raced into the compound with guns and machetes,” said Rev. Musa.
“I immediately ran and hid in a goat room next to our flat,” Musa recalled. “My wife, who had followed me outside, ran and hid in a detached bathroom,” Musa added. “They kicked the door down and marched in, shooting and shouting ‘Allahu’akbar’. Then they set fire on the building and started shouting, saying they had conquered.”
“They broke into the goat room where I was hiding and herded the goats away, but I was shielded behind the door after they kicked it open,” Musa said, adding the terrorists smashed windows and furniture in his church within the compound as they celebrated.
In another compound 50 feet away, the terrorists slaughtered a woman and her two children, including a 3-year-old girl, while two other residents – a man and a woman – were burned in separate rooms next door.
Body Counts Conflicted, Troops Unengaged
By 3 p.m. local time, 23 bodies had been identified, with several residents still missing, according to county Chairman Sati Shuwa. However, Solomon Dalyop, the youth leader of the Berom ethnicity, which dominates the area, told reporters that as many as 27 corpses were traced to various locations, with 23 taken to the mortuary for burial later. TruthNigeria counted at least four bodies burned to ashes in separate rooms.
Mr. Dung Gyang Davou, leader of a 60-man civilian defense unit, told TruthNigeria his team struggled for two hours to contain the terrorists attacking from four fronts. “Some came from the south, some from the west, another set from the east, and some from the north,” Davou said.
“They were too many for us,” Davou stated. “They were more than 100, all armed with AK47, K2, and G3 rifles.”
“We only had pipe guns, and that made us withdraw,” he said, noting soldiers from Operation Safe Haven, located just two miles away, arrived two hours late. Minutes before the military trucks pulled up into town on the highway, Musa heard the terrorists tell one another to withdraw before soldiers arrived.
“They said in Hausa dialect ‘let’s go, soldiers are on their way’,” Musa told TruthNigeria.
Troops Deployed but Failed to Engage: Tribal Leader
Col. Thomas Paave, the Commander of OPSH Sector 6, has yet to respond to queries from TruthNigeria, nor has the army headquarters in Jos. However, the youth leader of the Berom tribe, Solomon Dalyop, told reporters that troops were indeed deployed by the military authorities but failed to engage the terrorists.
“We demand a thorough investigation into the activities of the troops that were sent,” said Dalyop.
“This is part of the collusion and complicity of the security agencies that, having been sent to respond to distress calls, they couldn’t [engage the terrorists], and it led to this [massacre],” Dalyop told TruthNigeria.
“These are terrorists who have established camps within our territory and are killing everybody,” said Dalyop. “Information available to us, which we shared with the military since last week, is that they have brought in mercenaries on five pickup trucks into one of the Fulani settlements around here, but they failed to take action,” Dalyop stated.
The Fulani are a majority-Muslim ethnicity with over 20 million members in West Africa and around 10 million in Nigeria. Despite emerging as one of Nigeria’s most politically influential ethnic groups, the Fulani are historically known for staging early jihad wars in West Africa. In recent years, militants identifying as Fulani have been accused of killing six times more Christians than Boko Haram.
In the past two years of President Bola Tinubu’s Administration alone, Fulani militants have jointly killed 15,640 Nigerian Christians, according to Intersociety, an international nonprofit tracking genocide around the world. This figure suggests as many as 7,820 Christians were killed each year, 650 each month, and 22 each day, with the highest tolls recorded in Benue and Plateau States, regarded as the largest Christian States in Nigeria’s north, according to Intersociety.
“We are dealing with attackers who are terrorists, who are bandits, who are armed Fulani militants, not Fulani herdsmen; it must be known,” Dalyop emphasized. “And if the government will not rise up to its responsibility to guarantee the safety of lives, we will have no option but to resort to self-help.”
The attack on Bindi community is the latest in the area by terrorists who have killed more than 70 residents in recent months, according to County Chairman Sati Shuwa.
“Our people are killed on a daily basis,” said Shuwa.
“And the suspects are not far from here,” Shuwa told reporters at the scene of the attack. “Riyom has only Fulani settlers and the natives,” Shuwa said, stating, “The attackers are the Fulani.”
Former Senator Simon Mwadkon concurs: “When you say the tribe of the perpetrators, people will say you are stereotyping them, but no, they are Fulani,” Mwadkon told reporters.
“We are aware that they came from different parts of this country,” Mwadkon said. “A lot of them, in their hundreds, have moved into Plateau, and even as we speak, they are still hiding in the surrounding mountains.”
“And all the time we hear the military say they have repelled them. What are you repelling? People have come to kill, for goodness’ sake, such people should also die,” Mwadkon stressed. “That is when we will have peace,” he said, adding, “this problem will persist if adequate measures are not taken and the killers are allowed to roam free.”
Motivation: Land Seizure and Control
Mwadkon emphasized the motivation for the attacks is land-grab and territorial control.
“This community, for instance, is not at war with anybody,” Mwadkon said. “The terrorists came in the night, killed people, burned them in their houses, destroyed worship places. The residents didn’t go to where the Fulani are residing. They came and attacked them in their houses. So let us call a spade a spade. These people must be called by their name: they are terrorists, and their goal is to decimate the local population and take over this place,” he said, dismissing false narratives by genocide deniers claiming the attacks are clashes between sedentary farmers and semi-nomadic cattle herders.
Masara Kim is an award-winning conflict reporter in Jos and a senior editor at TruthNigeria.
