The Galadima of Daffo in Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State, Da Jonathan Sunday Akuns, has decried the continual massacre of innocent citizens in the council area.

He declared that such occurrences serve as a piece of ready evidence that minorities in northern Nigeria have been marked for extinction. He regretted that the blood of his people is always shed periodically without any sustained effort by the relevant authorities to come to their rescue.

He stressed that the constant shedding of blood has become the only way of “amplifying the voice of Ron ethnic people in their cry for justice and equal rights.”

Akuns noted that “two factors are at the heart of the observed gangster culture of criminality, the doctrinal bias of the defence and security forces of Nigeria and realpolitik or overbearing ethnic struggle for survival cum control of political power in Nigeria.”

While asserting that “strong political will is required to unlink and deescalate gangster violence in Nigeria,” the Galadima Daffo called for a review of the doctrinal practices of the defence and security forces, and a review of the federal structure of governance in Nigeria.

He said: “To immerse a symbiosis in agricultural occupational practices, I consider the plight of Ron ethnic people in Bokkos LGA as one that speaks for all the minority ethnic groups in Nigeria; the plight is the raison d’etre of two Commissions on minority rights in Nigeria, namely, R.S. Hudson in 1956 by the defunct regional government of erstwhile northern Nigeria and Sir Henry Willink in 1957 by the federal government of Nigeria.”

Tracing the genesis of the recent attack, Akuns, who is also the Saf (clan head) of Mandung Village, explained that Bokkos, as an administrative entity, is a Local Government Area comprising three main ethnic groups.

He explained that the Ron ethnic group, which was attacked, forms the largest with nine and a half federal electoral wards, as well as two such wards in Barkin Ladi LGA.

“Kulere has two and a half federal electoral wards and Mushere has two. All of the reported gangster killings in Bokkos by the Fulani are mostly in Ron ethnic territory. It began in 2016 with the killing of three monarchs, two District Heads, and a devastating assault on the paramount Monarch, Saf Ron, Da Lazarus A. Agai.

“The Police offered a bounty of N10 million to anyone with useful information about the assailants of the paramount ruler to no avail. A fourth District Head was killed in 2021.

“Thereafter, not less than 35 Ron ethnic people were killed in two days by a gangster attack in Daffo in 2018; then Kwatas in January 2020; 23-26 December 2023, and now 52 people on March 27 and April 2, 2025, in Ruwi and Hurti, respectively,” he narrated.

The traditional monarch noted that besides the gangster killing episodes, “sporadic killings, rapes, kidnaps, farmland trespass cum crop ravaging, including sundry petit crimes occur in multi fronts regularly within the territory.”

He stated that the Ron ethnic people seem overwhelmed by such criminal acts and helpless that their psyche seems numbed. He lamented that since 2016 to date, not a single prosecution has been meted out to the criminal gangs despite spates of arrests by the police, military and other security services.

On the likely cause of the recent attack and massacre, Akuns, who is also an Economist by profession, said: “The Hurti episode is linked to Military arrests of some suspected Fulani criminals in Josho between March 30 and 31, 2025 and a team of Ron persons rescuing a cleric kidnapped in Mangor by Fulani.

“In response, the Fulani gangsters pounced on Ron people in Hurti in broad daylight on April 2, 2025. 35 victims were buried, 20 were hospitalised for various degrees of injuries, scores were missing and also displaced into the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps and still counting.

“The official and media narratives about the conflict between livestock breeders and crop farmers constitute an insignificant reason for the spate of ongoing gangster killings in Ron areas.

“Whether such conflicts are induced by climate change as the repeated mantra or population factors is left to conjecture.“In sum, economic activities thrive within regulatory laws and not by lawless handling of grievances as with livestock breeders.”