EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was first published in 2013 by Flair Nigeria. The ICIR is reproducing the five-part series in the light of the resurgence of killings in Plateau State, to help readers understand the genesis, depth, brutality and possible solutions to violence in the state.

In the second of this five-part series, ‘’FISAYO SOYOMBO details the pains of families of victims, how they have carried on without their loved ones, and how the killings have altered their perception of life.

This is the first — and only time — in 11 days that the recorders roll for minutes and everyone is mum. It’s in Tatu Village, in Jos South Local Government (9°48′00″N 8°52′00″E), where little Blessing, the interviewee, is the only survivor of a near-successful extermination of a family of six.

The 10-year-old might as well have been killed alongside her father, mother and three siblings, but on the night of the attack, November 26, 2013, she slept in a relative’s house inside the same compound. While Blessing escaped unhurt, Yob Eliha her host and a widow, survived with burns around her shoulder. Meanwhile, Yop Yakubu, 49, a second widow in the compound, was murdered.

“We don’t know where the killers came from,” Blessing’s aunt, 26-year-old Hanatu, who now looks after her, says of the attack. “All we know is that they forced their way into the compound some minutes after 11pm, and began firing gunshots indiscriminately at the house.”

SHOT IN THE CROTCH

Clad in a mangy, loose-fitting robe, Blessing looks away from the camera for the most of the interview, her face contorted by anguish too weighty for her infantile shoulders. She still covets the return of her family. She hopes to have them back with her someday — a day she occasionally asks her aunt to reveal.

“Sometimes, Blessing asks me if her parents and siblings are still coming,” Hanatu says, intently locking eyes with the girl as though picking the words from her nondescript eyes. Hanatu herself buckles while the words slip bit by bit, her voice quivering beyond concealment.

“When she does, I tell her they won’t come again,” she continues, as her voice relapses into a second spell of tremble, this time thinning out like a lit candle running out of wax. Then she stares blankly into space, absentmindedly fiddling with her fingers. Everyone watching understands: her despair knows no bound.

She knows there is no chance any member of Blessing’s family would return. They are all dead and buried. And they never quite had a chance: her father, Davou Yakubu; mother, Yop Davou; sister, Serah Davou (14); and brother, Timothy Davou (12) all suffered multiple gun wounds. The last, Felix Davou, who was only four months, was shot in the crotch. So, really, the possibility for survival never quite existed for them; and Blessing, now in Class Five, will have to accept the austerity of life without the people in whose trusted hands her life began.

‘THE QUEEN OF SORROW’

“Since my son died, I have been unhappy,” Nandir Vongchak, 80, says. “My life has been filled with sorrow, and this has brought perpetual illness upon me.”

With that, Vongchak synopsises her misery since the killing of her son in June 2013. Nothing about her demeanour suggests otherwise. No smile. No giggle. No semblance of hope. Face stony and carriage emotionless, Vongchak unhurriedly de-husks groundnut borne by two calabashes on the floor. That is how she keeps company every day, waiting till the hour when mortality will terminate memories of her slain son.

“On that day, my son came in from his theology school to greet me,” she recalls, for once paying heed to something other than the two calabashes. Clearly, the groundnuts are her most valuable possession, the source of livelihood for her and the three fatherless grandchildren whose upkeep has now become her responsibility.

After mother and son exchanged pleasantries, son made for his groundnut-and-maize farm in Zamchang, a village in Wase Local Government. On his second day on the farm, he was hacked to death. According to Vongchak, it was a maliciously-intended killing.

“They killed him purposely,” she says, “not that the killers were robbers or that they wanted anything from him. His life was all they hungered after.” This, she is convinced is the intention, because “Wase people do not want to see Taroh people around them. That is why they are hunting and killing Taroh people.”


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnHvmueug_Q

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/blood-plateau-2-four-month-old-baby-shot-crotch-stories/

Sucks to be a Nigerian big time. Nigeria has consistently failed it's citizens time and time again. F..king hell hole!