NBA: Curfew no shield as gunmen still strike Plateau villages

JOS — Lawyers across Plateau State on Monday accused armed groups of treating a government dusk-to-dawn curfew as a hunting licence, saying communities that stay indoors are being attacked while vigilantes on night watch are cut down at their posts.

The four Nigerian Bar Association branches in the state — Jos, Pankshin, Bukuru and Shendam — spoke jointly at the NUJ Secretariat in Jos. Jos branch chairman Morgan Dung read the statement. His counterparts, Selven Zingman (Pankshin), Lucy Pam-Fom Bot (Bukuru) and Sylvia Kumtong (Shendam), stood with him.

They framed the crisis as a constitutional failure, not merely a run of rural raids. Section 33 of the 1999 Constitution, they said, guarantees the right to life. Protecting that right, they argued, is the first duty of government. Continued killings in Mangu, Barkin Ladi, Riyom and Bokkos, they added, show that duty is not being met.

Governor Caleb Mutfwang imposed a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. restriction on Mangu, Barkin Ladi and Bokkos on 21 September after a cluster of attacks that left more than a dozen dead and houses and farms burned. The order was meant to give security agencies room to restore order.

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Within hours and then days, community groups and local reporters said the opposite happened: attackers still moved, still struck, and still left bodies.

The lawyers singled out Kikyo (also reported as Kikyau or Kyikyau) in Mangu Halle District. There, they said, community guards keeping watch during curfew hours were killed at their duty post. Separate accounts named the dead as Samson Dachet, 45; Gambo Fwangyil, 50; and Zughumnan Bamaiyi, 35 — ambushed around 7.49 p.m. on 23 September, a day after the curfew took effect. The Mwaghavul Youth Movement asked a blunt question that the NBA echoed in different words: if law-abiding people are locked indoors and gunmen still roam, who is the curfew protecting?

The association also listed Kantoma (Cantoma) and Bin-Per in Mangu, and Kasa (Kassa) in Marit District of Barkin Ladi, as scenes of “ugly developments.” Broader reporting over the same week described a messy, two-sided spiral: miners shot at Kworos Gangare; farmlands razed at Jol, Gashish, Rapwomol and Dorowa Babuje; women blocking the Jos–Barkin Ladi–Mangu road; herders killed in a vehicle at Kassa; houses burned in reprisal. Death tallies for the two-day stretch after the curfew varied by source, but several outlets put the figure at about 11 in one weekend of raids, with livestock rustled and barns set alight.

“This is an invitation to total anarchy and complete breakdown of law and order,” the NBA said.

The lawyers warned that when attackers operate without swift consequence, citizens conclude that life is cheap and the state cannot protect them. They alleged that some communities have been emptied, their land occupied and renamed, while survivors remain displaced. They also pointed to Garga in Kanam Local Government Area, on the Bauchi and Taraba borders, as a corridor they say is feeding armed influx from Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba and the Republic of Niger.

They did not pretend the state has done nothing. They commended the revival of Operation Rainbow, the training of about 2,000 Neighbourhood Watch members and hunters, the supply of gun trucks and a command-and-control centre. They still want those outfits licensed to use kinetic force, the Anti-Land Grabbing Law enforced, and local government chairmen living in their councils rather than in Jos.

To Abuja they were more demanding. President Bola Tinubu was praised for visiting after the Jos North killings earlier in the year and for talking up state police and citizen security training. That, they said, is not enough. They want an executive bill moving security onto the Concurrent Legislative List so governors can command operations in practice; better pay and kit for federal forces to blunt allegations of bias; tighter border watch; and the degazetting of forests around the Pa’I River Game Reserve, which they described as a hideout.

For the security services they listed operational fixes: move combat vehicles to flashpoints now; control the leak of military kit and prosecute impersonators; investigate late responses; stop parking long-serving officers in the same posts. On the courts they want time-bound terrorism trials, sanctions for lawyers who stall cases, governors to sign death warrants where convictions stand, and public accounting of trials of alleged sponsors.

The statement closed with a political warning that will travel farther than the legal citations. Dung noted that as of 11 a.m. on Saturday, 26 September, six people were confirmed dead at Laja village in Marin District — then tied the bloodshed to the approaching 2027 contest. If the killings do not stop, he said, there may be no citizens left to vote. Campaigns and policies, however well written, only matter to the living.

That last line is campaign rhetoric. The rest of the brief is a charge sheet against a security system that can declare a curfew and still lose the night.