O earth, hear that Plateau widow, victim of Fulani terror

WHEN they sleep tonight, surrounded by guns and mortars, and by whores and wine, the people who rule Nigeria’s Plateau State will have little qualms about snoring. Beyond the 2027 ambition lodged in their breasts, they have little care about anything. They can eat when they please, frolic when they fancy, and laugh when they like. They are masters of the universe who have seen and known very little, if any, sorrow, although the people they lead daily shed their blood to defend the land of their ancestors and the dignity of their very human essence.

Plateau State, until evidence emerges to the contrary, must be regarded as a land under siege — external and internal. The people who rule the land, if the allegations by Coscharis Group founder and chairman Dr. Cosmas Maduka are anything to go by, have no care for the people. According to Maduka, speaking on a podcast, a certain Plateau State governor once asked his company to double the invoiced price of vehicles as a condition for a supply deal. Hear Maduka: “They wanted us to supply vehicles and we delivered vehicles, but they wanted me to inflate invoices of vehicles of ₦40 million to ₦80 million.” According to Maduka, another buyer eventually purchased the vehicles from Coscharis at the company’s stated price after obtaining invoices elsewhere at an inflated sum. Apparently, these corrupt clowns funnel their fraud through intermediaries to evade detection and escape scrutiny, but that is only because the joints called State Houses of Assembly are either the governor’s lodge or the ex-governor’s lodge, exclusively owned by rogues.

With those in the saddle busy robbing the state blind, it is no wonder that Fulani terrorists continue to ravage the land, shedding blood at will and exterminating generations of hapless citizens. Per the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), Fulani terror groups and ethnic militias slaughtered over 18,500 civilians in Nigeria between 2020 and 2025. I’d wager, given the evidence provided by media reports and my close eye on the land where I obeyed the clarion call, that the vast majority of victims are in the minority North, particularly the Plateau of blood. It is no shock that research reports covering multi-year periods up to 2025 indicate that Fulani terror groups account for roughly 44 percent of all documented terror-related civilian deaths in Nigeria, killing significantly larger numbers of people than Boko Haram and ISWAP combined in the same period, but the main concern for me is the treachery and treason inherent in the official (non)response to the endless carnage. If state governors are busy looting the treasury while those intent on total extermination of the populace keep roasting the people in abattoirs of bloodshed, don’t tell me the mortal enemy is not already lodged within the Community of Anguish. At a stage, perplexed by the inaction of the Nigerian State, elders of different Plateau communities called on the United Nations to rescue the land from certain death. But now it is sufficiently clear that leadership is the first obstacle that must be dismantled before Plateau people, among them the grieving widow whose distressing case birthed this piece, can heave any sigh of relief in the land of their ancestors.

In Nigeria, as I observed in the very first piece on this page, direct, land-based assaults on rural communities and farming settlements by Fulani terrorists are deodorized in government circles — and now I must add, by a pliant, unthinking and unreflective media — as farmer-herder clashes. Terrorists brandishing weapons that even men of the armed forces covet set upon the victim communities and lay them bare, killing, beheading, raping and mutilating people at will, but then officialdom puts them on the same pedestal, the same boxing ring, as the people they maul and grind to powder, glibly speaking of “farmer-herder clashes” and sounding like robots! Farmer-herder clashes kill you there!

Politicians, you will have your whores and wine beside you  when bedtime callstonight. If you choose to sleep at home, you will have your many wives to enjoy. But the grieving widow who gave a moving tribute to her husband, the Youth Leader of Kassa, Plateau State, who was cut down in cold blood by Fulani dogs this week, will have only her tear-soaked wrapper and troublesome thoughts as her companion for the night. Her husband, the man she fondly called My Daddy, lies within our terrorized earth, cut down in the unending festival of Fulani rage, never again to see the sun, never again to behold the eyes that loved him tenderly, and never again to see the land in whose defence he paid the ultimate price.

I do not know the woman, but I stand by her in this hour of state-hewn trial. Let her words stand on record eternally against the terrorists who made Kassa crimson with her husband’s blood: “Go well. He is my husband. I’m the youth leader’s wife. My husband said he would not stand by and watch his community members get slaughtered. He would rather die protecting vulnerable families. This was always my quarrel with him. I told him to quit his leadership. For three years we have been under siege by Fulani (terrorists). I told him, ‘Quit this role; I have lost everything, I can’t keep up anymore.He said, ‘My mummy, this is the work the Lord has called me to do. I cannot watch my community get annihilated. I would rather die protecting it.’ Your words have come to fulfillment. My daddy, go well. May the Lord forgive your shortcomings, receive your soul, and give you rest. You died as a hero. You died as a legend. May your legacy inspire generations. Keep praying for me that the Lord will strengthen me. We are grateful. Together with your colleagues, Barry and Danny, may the Lord give you peace. You died for your land. God will fight for us till we come.”

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The gallant, noble woman spoke while standing at the mass grave where her husband and two other vigilantes were buried after the 1 a.m. attack on September 25, 2026, in Kassa community, Barkin Ladi.

I mourn with you, Sister. May the Almighty God give you and your loved ones comfort, and crush the killers of your husband, and the leaders who enabled the carnage. Till this moment, the rogues who run Plateau State have not approved state policing. May the land throw up real leaders who will fight the invaders and damn the consequences. May the time come when the farmers in the “farmer-herder clashes” sizzle their tormentors in sulphur. May Barkin Ladi and the 16 other divisions on the Plateau know peace. Amin.