THE Plateau State Government has faulted the failure of the soldiers of the Nigerian Army to arrest the killers of 27 farmers in the Tahoss community of the Riyom Local Government Area of Plateau State on Monday.
The state government blamed the military for the failure to arrest or neutralise any of the suspected gunmen despite establishing contact with them during the attack.
“The checkpoint is barely 200 meters from where this incident happened,” the state’s Information Commissioner, Joyce Ramnap, said on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme on Friday monitored by News Point Nigeria.
“The response we got was that none were arrested and none were captured. None of those killed were affected by all that happened.”
The commissioner said the community that was attacked by the gunmen was close to an access road, which has military checkpoints.
“It is not a hidden community that we would say it is far, and that is why the people were not able to access help,” she said.
“We do not want to stereotype and say that the entire Army compromised in this case.
“However, there is room to do more investigation, and the governor specifically requested that at least they should have some form of arrest.
“If you are that close and you engaged them closely like that, you should be able to say this is where they followed and the measures to arrest them, but so far, no arrest has been made,” the commissioner added.
Ramnap said the fresh killings of the people of Plateau were unprovoked and despicable.
She said that besides killing the people, the assailants go into the farms and destroy all their crops.
The commissioner echoed the sentiments of Governor Caleb Mutfwang, who visited the community on Wednesday and described the perpetual killings of the people by gunmen as a genocide.
She said, “Like the governor has said, we have gallant soldiers in the country, we also have them within Plateau State that are making their efforts to ensure that there is peace on the Plateau, but of course, we still have the bad eggs among them.
“The attacks came from three different sides of the community. One side was able to contain them and ensure that nothing happened. The other side that was closest to the place where the people were hiding in the church, those were the ones that were worst hit, and that is why we got that number of casualties.
“The pastor of that church, at a point, said he would not stay there and wait for them to kill him as well.
He left, and his wife followed him, and right in his house, six people were killed.”
For months, Plateau State, in North Central Nigeria, has been a cynosure of killings. The grisly killing of over 100 residents by gunmen who unleashed mayhem on communities in the Bokkos and Bassa local government areas of the state in April attracted national and global outrage.
The death toll in the April 2025 attacks was the highest casualty figure in the spate of killings recorded in the state after daredevil criminals killed about 150 residents in Bokkos on Christmas Eve in 2023.