The image of Reverend Dachomo weeping inside a mass grave

THE image of Plateau cleric, Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo, sitting inside a freshly dug mass grave and weeping uncontrollably should trouble every Nigerian with a conscience. Around him were the bodies of four members of his community killed in Shurum, Dorowa Babuje District of Barkin Ladi Local Government Area, Plateau State, on October 16. Accounts accompanying the viral footage described the dead as a father and his three sons. Whatever details investigators may establish, the essential fact is beyond dispute: four more Nigerians were murdered, another community was thrown into mourning, and a cleric was again left to bury victims of a security failure that has become horribly familiar.

Dachomo’s tears are not merely the grief of one pastor. They are an indictment of the Nigerian State. He has said that he has presided over more than 70 mass burials arising from attacks in Plateau and elsewhere in the Middle Belt. In June, Reuters footage showed him being helped into another mass grave after 20 people were killed in an attack in Plateau. Human Rights Watch has described the recurring violence in the state as a persistent security crisis marked by killings, reprisals, weak protection and inadequate accountability. Amnesty International reported in May 2025 that at least 2,630 people had been killed in Plateau in the first two years of the present state and Federal Government. A country cannot continue to treat mass burial as a recurring feature of ordinary life.

The Plateau killings have been described variously as Christian genocide, land grabbing, communal warfare, farmer-herder conflict, banditry, terrorism or some combination of these. Many affected communities identify armed Fulani militants as responsible for the attacks, while security reporting on individual incidents often refers simply to suspected gunmen until investigations are completed. Whatever description is employed, criminal responsibility must attach to the perpetrators, financiers and collaborators. Disputes over terminology must never become an excuse for official inaction or evasion of responsibility. The question is, therefore, painfully simple: who will stop this chaos?

The first answer must be the Federal Government. The 1999 Constitution does not assign the protection of life to grieving pastors or frightened village vigilantes. Yet the symbolism of federal leadership has often been deeply disappointing. After the March 29 massacre at Angwan Rukuba in Jos North, in which more than 28 people were killed, President Bola Tinubu visited Plateau State on April 2 but did not go to the attacked community or the hospitals. His engagement with victims and leaders was confined to Yakubu Gowon Airport. The Presidency cited scheduling, flight and operational constraints. Those explanations may describe the logistics, but they do not cure the symbolism in the hearts of the grieving community. When citizens have been slaughtered, the Commander-in-Chief shouldstand on the ground where the blood was shed.

Indeed, if the Nigerian State cannot secure a presidential visit to a devastated Nigerian community, what message does that send to those who live there permanently? It creates the intolerable impression that the killers possess greater freedom of movement than the people they terrorise. No armed group should appear beyond the reach of the state, and no village in Plateau should become territory into which government arrives only through condolence statements.

Governor Caleb Mutfwang has repeatedly condemned the killings and has urged the military to treat the violence as a threat to national sovereignty rather than routine peacekeeping. But Plateau natives and residents are entitled to demand more than increasingly familiar condemnations. The governor does not control the federal police or military, but he controls the political machinery of the state and can insist on measurable security outcomes: strengthened community intelligence, properly supervised local security structures, rapid-response arrangements for vulnerable settlements, transparent reporting of arrests and prosecutions, and relentless pressure on Abuja. Every attack followed only by another statement of outrage deepens public despair.

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The people of Plateau themselves must also close ranks. They have a right to peaceful, sustained civic protest against the failure to protect them. Churches, mosques, traditional institutions, professional bodies, youth organisations, women’s groups and political leaders should demand security with one voice. But protest must not become reprisal, ethnic profiling or mob justice. Innocent Fulani citizens are not substitutes for unidentified gunmen, just as innocent Berom, Irigwe (Rigwe), Mwaghavul or any other citizens must never be made targets by Fulani militants. The objective must be to isolate murderers, not manufacture fresh enemies. Where perpetrators are identified with a particular ethnic nationality, its traditional, religious and political leaders have a responsibility to speak out against the atrocities, cooperate with security agencies and help resolve underlying disputes peacefully. Silence in the face of recurring atrocities only deepens suspicion and undermines the prospects for peaceful coexistence.

There is now an opportunity for structural change. The constitutional amendment establishing state police has crossed the required threshold of approval by at least 24 State Houses of Assembly. The National Policing Bill and consequential legislation are also being finalised. The Federal Government, National Assembly and states should move with urgency to complete the process. President Tinubu should give the reform the priority that Nigeria’s security emergency demands. State police will not be a magic cure, and safeguards will be essential against abuse by governors, but locally recruited, locally knowledgeable and properly accountable policing can improve intelligence and response times in places where distant federal structures have repeatedly failed.

Rev. Dachomo should not have to sit in another mass grave. No Nigerian cleric should become famous for the number of mass burials he has conducted. No family should wait for gunmen who have attacked before and may attack again. The image from Plateau is not merely a picture of grief. It is a picture of state failure. The tears inside that grave should shame the authorities into action.

This chaos has lasted too long. It must stop.