NIGERIA: Jos Crisis: “We are overmatched, they are foreigners” – Military

There appears a caustic reality settling onto the streets and homes of the residents and indigenes of Plateau State amidst an unending bloodshed that has defeated all efforts towards engineering a lasting solution to peace. Information available to 247ureports.com through a military source attached to the security operatives operating in Barkin Ladi to fish out the killers of the legislators and the Senator – reveals that the killers who committed the heinous murder on the Sunday late morning made have not been Fulani’s as widely reported in the Nigerian media.

According to the military officer, following the attack on the mourners, the special task force [STF] based in selected parts of Plateau State were called up into a hot pursuit of the murderers – believed to be Fulani’s at the time. As the pursuit ensure, the military source told our correspondent that the commanders had only dispatched about 40 military men to accomplish the job – only to be surprised as they entered the forest to engaged the supposed Fulani men.

The military source made it clear that “Nigeria was under attack from unknown foreign forces”. He said that the fighters were armed with SMGs – and each gunner had personal loader who reloads the SMGs as the gunner is engaged with the Nigerian military. “They were more than 400 in number and well trained”, he said while adding that the Nigerian military were quickly surrounded immediately by the supposed Fulani attackers. “It took the quick intervention of the military helicopter that came with firepower from up to disperse them”.

He confirmed that during the unfortunate approach to the supposed Fulani attackers – two policemen were gun down – and another police officer was said to have collapsed and died. “He could not take it” said the source. One of the attackers was critically wounded during the attack – “but he later died”.

The military man who was clearly pumped and excited cautioned that the attackers were fast and well trained – and they are advancing to other regions of Plateau State. “Our firepower is not softening them”, he said as he went to explain that the attackers do not look Fulani – “some of them resemble Somalians”. He spoke on the extent of firepower packed by fighters and the level of preparedness as “frightening”.

On the instruction to ‘fish out’ the attackers given by the President of the federal republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebelemi Jonathan, the military source called the instruction “a giant order”. He noted that the leaders of Nigeria might not know what may be unfolding in Plateau State. “This is not a tribal matter”, he concluded.

Some within the leadership of Nigeria which 247urepports.com approached on the unfolding pogrom saw the crisis slightly different. In the words of the Deputy Senate President, Hon. Ike Ekweremadu, “The plateau situation is peculiar. It’s not religious. It’s ethnicity. It requires a sustained dialogue. The present ad hoc meetings with d groups will not suffice. I suggest a committee which the parties can trust to be set up with a time line to negotiate peace”.