Plateau State Governor Caleb Mutfwang on Wednesday paid a security assessment visit to the Angwan Rukuba community in Jos North Local Government Area, arriving in an armoured tank to assess the site of Sunday’s deadly shooting.
The Governor’s visit followed a heinous attack where gunmen, posing as customers at a local beer parlour, opened fire indiscriminately before fleeing into nearby hills.
Addressing grieving families and survivors, Governor Mutfwang pledged that his administration would be relentless in ensuring the perpetrators are brought to book.
Governor Mutfwang called for unity among traditional and religious leaders, stressing that security must be treated as a shared responsibility.
He further announced that the state government would assume responsibility for the medical bills of the injured and provide befitting burials for those who lost their lives.
Despite these assurances, the visit was met with palpable tension.
Residents expressed deep-seated scepticism, noting that similar high-level promises had followed previous massacres in Riyom and Kanam without resulting in significant arrests or prosecutions.
Discrepancies in the casualty figures also fuelled local frustration; while the police officially confirmed 12 deaths, residents insisted the toll exceeded 30, citing video evidence of the scene.
Reacting, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan (Kogi Central) in a statement condemned the attack describing the recurrent violence on the Plateau as a stain on our collective humanity.
She urged the federal security apparatus to move beyond reactive measures and implement proactive intelligence-gathering to protect vulnerable rural communities.
In a similar vein, a youth leader from the Angwan Rukuba community in Jos North local government in an interview with social activist Martins Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM) has accused officers of the Nigerian Army of complicity in the attacks.
According to the interview monitored by NewsDirect, the leader claimed that soldiers not only failed to prevent Sunday’s deadly attack but actively protected the assailants as they retreated from the scene.
The youth leader, providing a harrowing eyewitness account, described the moments when gunmen invaded a local relaxation spot, posing as customers before opening fire.
He alleged that as the community mobilized to apprehend the attackers who were attempting to flee toward the nearby hills they were intercepted by military personnel stationed in the area.
According to the youth leader, the local defense groups had successfully cornered some of the suspects.
However, he claimed that instead of assisting in the arrest, the soldiers turned their weapons on the youths, creating a security corridor that allowed the gunmen to escape into the bush.
“We were chasing them; we almost had them,” the youth leader stated during the interview. “But the soldiers started shooting at us, the victims, to give the killers space to run. They were protecting the people who just finished shooting our brothers and sisters. If the army wanted those men caught, they would have been caught that night.”
