“We were sitting around, talking and exchanging jokes, when the soldier who in charge of the seven soldiers guiding Godogodo approached us,” said another vigilante. “ He and his troops were in their pick up van. He came down from the van and came over to us. We went to a side where he said that he had important information to tell us.”
Continuing: “He said that soldiers from another formation were coming to search Godogodo for firearms. That if any of us had any guns, we must immediately remove them to a safer place, since they were on their way. He said he did not want to be seen as aiding them to bear arms. It was around 5:30pm last Saturday. He left with his soldiers. Some of us, who had hunting guns or den guns ran and took them into hiding. We even called those that were not around to come get their stuff out,” he said.”-Vanguard Newspapers of 22nd October, 2016.
When one listens to the narratives of the now infamous Godogodo massacre, one is forced to blink in disparagement, especially at the conspiracy that has come to surround it.
Godogodo is a community in Southern Kaduna State. It’s being the news chiefly for the spates of heinous attacks on it by marauding elements who have been accused to be members of the now notorious Fulani Herdsmen. Recently, the village suffered another gruesome attack that has a rather disturbing mix of military conspiracy.
Godogodo is mainly a Christian community, and this makes the whole issue of the attack a sort of concocted design with a taste of vengeful sectional appeal significantly for the place of the military, who have been accused of stealthy partisanship.
Reports have it that this community have severally been hunted by these invading arms-wielding warmongers in the guise of nomadic cattle rearers. For this very purpose, the military was drafted into the village to help secure the inhabitants. They were passionately joined by willing young gallant men, whose sudden need to defend their community and lives against obvious dangers made them, though untrained, into weapon clutching supporting vigilantes.
The very process of living up to responsibility of protecting the vulnerable Godogodo community, which became so apparent with the noisome lurching around of the skinny merchants of death, instead of calling them to the core mandate, was soon to reveal the hidden agenda that had brought the uniformed men to this community.
It’s either they had this now-revealed mission as the very instruction handed to them before coming or it is that they were soon compromised to subvert their mandate as they arrived Godogodo.
Whichever it is,the undeniable truth is that, if the accussation of cheap conspiracy is anything to go by,the army sent to Godogodo failed the common responsibility required of them by both law and conscience.
The young men vigilantes, working with the armed personnel supposedly sent to help wade off the impending attacks the Fulani Herdsmen have constantly posed against their community, soon realised how the armed personnel were antithetical to their supposed primary mission there.
As would be recalled by one of the young vigilante men, one of the army officers, of whom they believed were there to safeguard them and of whom they believed had superior knowledge on arms struggle more than they do, and who ordinarily should be listened to for perceived instructions, had met them gathered in alertness,holding the defence apparatus they could afford.
The military officer informed them of an unscheduled visit by a senior officer. He warned them of the dire consequences of being met bearing arms, and in order not to be seen as abetting such ‘illegality’, he suggested that the young vigilantes did away with whatever ammunition they had, until the said visitor is gone.
Obediently, the young villagers, ready to defend their community, readily did away with the only means with which they could confront any attack – the very reason that had kept them watchfully alert – and they obeyed, without asking, in trust of good intention by their supposed defence.
However, unknown to them, the unscheduled army visitor was really the armed Fulani militias, as they would soon learn from the attack that followed not quite long. They discovered that it all was a powerful conspiracy; they discovered how they have been deceived, albeit lately.
The young men left armless and destabilized were left to scamper for safety, even in the face of the pricking groans of their vulnerable kinsmen and women that prodded them to act. But how would they, weaponless, act in the face of heavily armed enemies?
But, the involvement of overt conspiracy in the subsequent attack that mauled down over 40 harmless and helpless citizens, destroying their community, as wholesomely deprecating as it could be, brings up a lucid picture that would evidently express how unprofessional and abetting in the crime the armed officials acted.
And that is: for all conscientious reasoning, how criminal, even in the most illegal manner can a person or people be whose sole intent of bearing weapons is for self-defense, and especially when the threat is imminent and at such deadly close range? It can’t really meet even the dumbest of senses to have them without arms while threat of attacks whizzes across.
This is very critical here. We learnt that the reason adduced for causing the vigilantes to strip their necessary arms was not to be caught in the web of illegality. But what would have happened if the so-called senior officer visiting had found them with weapons? (And that’s if indeed he had visited).
But the subsequent happening, very heinous as it was, has shown us how deceptive that stunt was and of how culpable the military personnel posted to protect Godogodo were in the act that gave out the community to raging inferno and genocide.
For this reason, it is very demanding that (if this allegation of military conspiracy is anything to go by) the traitors and collaborators of this sinister agenda, who by their action have clearly shown to be cheaply sold out, must be brought to book. The massacre whether or not would have so devastatedly succeeded, was given massive leverage created by this military deceit.
They have betrayed the very responsibility that firstly called them to be claimants of the military stable. By this chilling massacre that have unravelled their hypocrisy, they must be booted out before they breed further likes that would deeply polarize and obliterate the values of the Nigerian Army.
Ahanonu Kingsley writes from Owerri, (conscience4net@gmail.com).
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