“As long as the security agencies allow this sort of thing to go on unabated without stopping it or bringing anyone to book after it happens and as long as the local people themselves are not well-armed with sophistcated weapons and well-trained in maintaining and using those weapons to defend themselves, the sectarian killings, the maimings and the barbarity will continue in Jos and in Plateau state. And the truth is that no-one is really interested in the causes anymore. It has now turned into nothing but a bloodfest
of sheer madness and lunacy…..a veritable and fertile blood bank for the demons of hell. The same thing is happening in Darfur in the Sudan where the utterly relentless Arab Janjaweed militia prey on and regularly slaughter and rape the virtually defenceless and ill-armed black African population. The lesson to be learnt is this: until a man is ready to defend himself, his family and his people with a gun and until he is ready to take the life of those that seek to kill him and all that is his without any hesitation there can never be peace. Weakness, ill-preparedness and hesitation in doing so actually attracts aggression from the other side. That is the lesson of history and the experinceof life. Unless you are completely insane you will not jump over a man’s wall to attack his home and his family if you know that there is every likelihood that he is waiting for you with a bigger gun at the other end.”
______________ Femi fani-Kayode, on the sectarian violence in Nigeria’s Plateau State, July 2010.