By TJ Benson
In Taraba, one of Nigeria's north-eastern states,
a series of ongoing violent clashes has met with
little to no response from government. And so, at
the edge of the country's border with Cameroon,
people have had to take matters into their own
hands.
In May 2015 I was travelling into Taraba, one of
the north-eastern states of Nigeria that share a
border with Cameroon. It felt as if I had left
Nigerian territory. It was not just the burnt-down
villages and trees; it was the absence of life in
the towns that were still standing.
The driver explained to me that there had been
several violent clashes in the state. It was
almost too difficult to keep up with the causes:
political differences had quickly become polarised
between Christianity and Islam. There were the
recurring cases of inter-ethnic violence between
the nomadic Fulani herdsmen and Tiv farmers.
Then, towards the end of 2015, a hotly contested
gubernatorial election erupted in violence with
each court judgment - and there seemed to be
no external intervention. Because of this, in
Taraba, people have had to take matters into
their own hands.
We were returning from a poetry event in Jos
that September when our car was stopped at a
road block. It was explained to us that we had
to contribute money to pay the soldiers who
would guarantee us safe passage through the
warzone that lay ahead of us. Had the soldiers
waited for the government to deploy them,
hundreds of travelers, me included, would have
been slaughtered that day. And going by the
resounding absence of news on Taraba State in
the country's media, my corpse would not have
made the evening news.
During the last violent crisis between Tiv farmers
and Fulani herdsmen in 2015, the village head of
one of the Tiv clans in the forest regions of
Donga Local Government refused to move, even
as the rest of the village escaped to a new
location. His legs had been damaged in a
previous attack, so he sat before an open
window and kept shooting at the attacking
herdsmen. I asked one of the villagers where on
earth the retaliating Tiv man had found his guns
and was told that they had come from
Cameroon, through Cross River State. When the
village leader's people returned, they found him
still there. They have not moved

The dark side of self-reliance
The problem with this self-reliance is that it is
not sustainable, and that people end up taking
the law into their own hands. This was evident in
the most recent crisis that followed the arrest of
one Umaru, who had been apprehended by
security operatives on suspicion of breaching the
peace in Nguroje town in Sardauna Local
Government Area on 16 June 2017. The man
who accused Mr Umaru, Mr Riwi Ahmadu, is a
Fulani man. Mr Umaru's children went to Mr
Riwi's house to demand the release of their
father. When he did not comply, they set his
house on fire. Things only escalated from there.
It was believed that the arrest of Umaru was
instigated by the Fulani and what followed was a
massacre of Fulani residents and the destruction
of property across the local government area. A
few arrests have been made and the injured have
been taken to the nearby cities of Gembu, Serti
and Jalingo for treatment, but some victims fled
to Cameroon before any help came from the
government. Even though a semblance of peace
is returning to the area, indigenes across the
state are on edge, waiting for the next crisis.
Fleeing to Cameroon
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There is a growing population of Nigerians from
Taraba State who are stranded without jobs in
Cameroon after fleeing from war. Many of them
cannot come back because they have nothing to
come back to. One Tiv student of mine told me
that he was moving to nearby Benue State,
where there was a greater population of people
who spoke his language.
The education of young people has been most
affected by this state of affairs. Students come
to school only when they can afford school fees.
Most of my students only appeared in class in
the second and third terms of the year as they
returned from hiding with their families. One of
my students had to sneak back to his
community to cultivate his slain parents'
desecrated farmland to raise the money that
would pay his school fees in the aftermath of the
crisis in 2015. Many girls have had to marry or
turn to prostitution to provide stability for their
families, while many boys await being mobilized
as pawns in the political clashes.
The public secondary schools in the region rely
heavily on members of the National Youth
Service Corps - post-graduate government
service workers - who may not be interested in
teaching as a profession. In the end, many
graduates from Taraba end up not being on par
with their peers from other parts of the country.
Some senior secondary school students in the
local government area where I served could not
even read. It is for these young ones that I fear
the most. They may have been forgotten by the
rest of the country; they may not understand
mathematics - but they understand violence.
Permanent solutions are needed
Right now, the people of Taraba are trying to
make things work on their own, but what Taraba
State needs most of all is a thorough re-
orientation. The ability for people to value one
another is the only thing that is missing in
Taraba State. The diversion of public funds, the
ongoing political crisis, the chronic lack of
revenue - all these things could be fixed if people
were able to look beyond their ethnicity and
religion. But because hate has become so
systemic, at this point it would take government
intervention to bring about any resolution
All these things could be fixed if people were
able to look beyond their ethnicity and religion.
Because hate has become so systemic, at this
point it would take government intervention to
bring about any resolution.
I believe Taraba State is potentially the food
basket of the Nigerian nation. Its landmass, the
scale of agriculture there, and the size of its
labour force could help Nigeria export food.
However, this would require farmers and
fishermen who felt safe. The children of this
state need to feel safe. They need to believe that
they really belong to the state or they will
continue fleeing.
Taraba State could be the food basket of Nigeria,
but that would require farmers and fishermen
who felt safe.
The introduction of programmes that would
repair relations between the diverse ethnic
groups in the state, a federal government that
intervened swiftly in times of crisis and had a
visible relationship with the state - all of these
are sorely needed. The generation of state
revenue, an improvement in the lifestyle of the
people and general security relies heavily on this.
Maybe then those who have fled to other parts
of the country, or other parts of the world, could
come home and educate the next generation.
*Based on report on the premiumtimesng.com
article of 21 June 2017