Yusuf Sarki had only stepped out for pepper soup.The elderly chief of his community in Angwan Rukuba, Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State, had gone out on Palm Sunday evening to a local bar called Stomdass along the main road to relax. He never came back.
Sarki, according to residents, was peaceful, genuinely loved his people and consistently made efforts to hold the community together. He was the man residents went to when something needed to be resolved or when neighbours were quarrelling. His death, those close to him say, left a hole in Angwan Rukuba that no appointment or replacement can fill.
At about 7.30 p.m. on March 29, gunmen stormed Angwan Rukuba, firing indiscriminately into the community. Witnesses said the attackers arrived during a power outage, some dressed in military uniforms.
Emmanuel Daniel, Sarki’s nephew and a youth leader in the community, told THE WHISTLER that he had returned from a church conference that same evening.
“When I came back from a conference we had from Friday to Sunday, I was tired. So, on getting home, I changed and went into my bathroom to take a bath, and I realised I was not having soup. I went out to get soup, just then, I heard some gunshots,” he told THE WHISTLER.
“On my way to get the soup, I saw people running from the main road to the street,” he said.
He and a group of youths scampered to safety as the gunmen advanced. What unsettled Emmanuel most, he said, was not the shooting itself. It was the manner it was done.
“They were walking so comfortably, and they were shooting anyhow. If you are blocking them or they meet you on the way, they will just shoot you,” he said.
The community’s only nearby security post, the Angwa Nkuba Police Outpost, was deserted. When Emmanuel and the other youths rushed there, they found it abandoned.
“We didn’t even see any of them inside the station. I believe they had run for their lives too,” he said.
Troops of Sector 1, Operation Enduring Peace, were eventually mobilised following a distress call. Security personnel, including the Nigerian Army, arrived at around 8.45 p.m. to restore order and secure the affected community.
Yusuf Sarki and dozens others had been killed or injured before their arrival.
“Some of them (residents) were dead. Some of them were injured. Those who were injured, we tried to rush them to the hospital,” Daniel said. It was then he realised his uncle was among those killed.
“We recorded 33 deaths as a result of the attack,” Daniel said. “This was only on Palm Sunday.”
The loss, Daniel said, is immeasurable not just to Sarki’s family, his two wives and seven children, but to the entire community that relied on him.
In the weeks preceding the attack, threats had circulated on social media following an incident in the neighbouring Barkin Ladi Local Government Area, where three men from the north were killed under unclear circumstances while travelling to a village market.
“The guys that were killed were indigenes of Jos north. They were on their way to a village market when they were attacked,” Daniel further explained.
He believes the attack on his community was a retaliation for the killing of the three men in Jos North.
“I don’t see where someone will offend you and then you go and retaliate on another person. Instead of going to where you were offended, you come back to our home,” he lamented.
“We have been living in peace. Any time they come to our area, they do their market, they sell, and they even sell water for people. Things have been going so smoothly and so nicely.”
Meanwhile, the Angwan Rukuba horrors did not end on Palm Sunday. In response to the attack, the Plateau State Government imposed a 48-hour curfew on Jos North Local Government Area. Daniel, however, said that lifting the curfew barely two days after exposed neighbouring communities to attacks.
Unknown gunmen, suspected to be bandits, attacked the Gari Ya Waye area of Angwan Rukuba on the same Palm Sunday night and killed scores of people.
“Our people were so naive on this. Immediately they lifted the curfew, and some of them came out to go on with their normal activities because they didn’t see it as a crisis,” he said.
He said the attackers had positioned themselves along routes that residents in the mostly Christian-dominated area ply to the market or their workplaces.
“They blocked a road and stopped a car at Bauti Junction and asked, ‘Is there any Christian in the car?’ And one man was the only Christian in the car. That was how they brought this man out. They butchered him,” Daniel said.
The victim, who was travelling from Kogi to the state, survived the attack.
Plateau State Governor, Caleb Mutfwang, during a condolence visit to Angwan Rukuba, pledged justice for the victims.
The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) has attributed these attacks to criminality, weak governance, and long-standing communal tensions.
Killed At Pepper Soup Joint — Family Recalls Night Gunmen Shot Jos Chief is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
