Plateau crises: The cotton has fallen. The FALSE narrative has been unmasked
By: Zagazola Makama
There was a time when every violent incident in Plateau was quickly packaged, exported and presented to the international community as another chapter in a supposedly endless “Christian genocide.” And it worked. But something has changed.
For those following the crisis from outside Nigeria, videos like this may still sound convincing because they are often presented without the context that Nigerians living through the crisis already know. But within Nigeria, particularly among communities directly affected by the violence, the simplistic genocide narrative has increasingly collided with the messy reality on the ground. And that reality is inconvenient.
We have documented thousands of pieces of evidence showing attacks, killings, destruction of property, cattle rustling, reprisal attacks and displacement affecting different communities. In some locations, one community suffers an attack and retaliates; elsewhere, the pattern is reversed. Yet somehow, in certain advocacy circles, the first attack can disappear into the footnotes while the retaliation becomes the headline.
Take, for example, some organisations engineering narratives in Plateau. Their reporting has repeatedly been criticised for selective emphasis, particularly when violence involving Plateau natives is concerned. If the victim belongs to one preferred category, the incident receives international attention. If the same crisis produces victims from another community, particularly Fulani, the story suddenly becomes much more complicated or disappears altogether in the media space.
Nigeria’s security crisis is increasingly being fought on two fronts. There is the physical battlefield, where terrorists, bandits and other criminals attack communities. And there is the information battlefield, where competing groups fight to control the narrative about what happened, who is responsible and why.
The second battlefield can determine what happens on the first.
What they want to push to the international community is: “Hundreds and thousands of churches are being destroyed,” and “Christians are killed for wearing the Cross.” They use terrible headlines to amplify what is, in many instances, a complex farmer-herder and communal conflict.
But what is the business of herders whose livestock was stolen with attacking churches or planing to orchestrate Christians genocide? Even recently, we have seen how the bullet does not differentiate. This time, one Muhammed Abdullahi was shot, but some conflict reporters carefully omitted that part because it does not fit their preferred narrative.
Apparently, in this version of Plateau’s history, the first bullet does not matter nearly as much as the identity of the person who fires the second one. And then comes the familiar formula:
Attack → retaliation → mass burial ceremony → international statement → “Christian persecution” or “genocide” → fundraising, advocacy and another round of international attention. Meanwhile, the underlying cycle continues.
Zagazola has recently published evidence of Fulani victims from Berom and Mwaghavul communities receiving compensation. Just yesterday, another Fulani man paid ₦1 million as compensation for destroying a farm.
Now the question is: Are they paying the compensation for committing genocide against Christians? Because from the look of things, even farm destruction is sometimes described within the wider Plateau conflict narrative as “genocide.”
Unfortunately, the crisis entrepreneurs will never publicise such narratives because stories like these do not fit neatly into the fashionable narrative. They demonstrate something profoundly inconvenient: there are people on both sides suffering losses, and Fulani individuals, when found wanting, are also coming forward to pay compensation.
Everyone knows that a large part of Plateau is peaceful. This crisis is concentrated in only a few LGAs. It started with Barkin Ladi, then Riyom became increasingly affected, later the Mwaghavul communities became drawn into the violence, and now there are concerns about the conflict spreading towards Pankshin. Even most recently, fake attack alarms were being publicized that some part of Plateau capital may be attacked. This narrative was only designed to drag everybody in the state into the crises. Meanwhile, Plateau State capital has remained largely peaceful, with people from different communities going about their normal businesses as usual.
It is only when you go into some of those affected villages that you begin hearing all sorts of narratives flying up and down. Nigerians who have watched these conflicts unfold know that the reality is considerably more complicated.
There are criminal elements among Fulani communities. There are criminal elements among Berom communities. There are criminal elements among Mwaghavul communities. There are armed actors, cattle rustlers, militia members, kidnappers, opportunistic advocates and criminals who exploit ethnic and religious grievances.
A criminal does not become a saint because he belongs to our ethnic group, whether Berom Militia, Mwaghavul Militia or Fulani bandits.
And a victim does not become less deserving of justice because he belongs to the “wrong” community.
The most disturbing aspect of the crisis is that Nigeria’s violence has created an ecosystem in which some actors can benefit from permanent fear. These are the conflict entrepreneurs.
They thrive on outrage and division. They thrive when grieving families are transformed into instruments for a much larger ideological campaign. They thrive when one community believes the other is preparing to destroy it.
This is where social media has become particularly dangerous. An attack committed by few criminals is being transformed into evidence of a national religious conspiracy. You keep hearing words like “The terrorists are attacking us to take over our land and established their religion. When young people are repeatedly told that an entire ethnic or religious population is responsible for the crimes of armed individuals, the result is not justice.
It is collective punishment. When communities are convinced that every member of another group is an enemy, innocent people become targets. The algorithm rewards anger. The conflict entrepreneur monetises it. The community pays the price.
For them, peace can actually be inconvenient. A peaceful Plateau produces fewer dramatic videos. A farmer and herder settling a dispute produces no sensational international headline. A compensation agreement produces no genocide narrative. A community preventing retaliation produces no viral footage. What is exportable is video of a dead body and an angry speech during funeral ceremonies. And so the tragedy continues to generate a market for people who claim to speak for the victims.
But even the international communities are now informed. The days when somebody could produce a dramatic video, invoke “Christian genocide,” send it abroad and expect everyone to simply accept the story without questioning the missing half of the evidence are disappearing.
This is because Nigerians are watching, they are now documenting what is happening. Nigerians are comparing the stories with what actually happened on the ground. This is because every story comes with pictures, coordinates, dates and their timing.
The international community should do the same. The BBC African Eye has taken the lead by carrying out a documentary that showcased the reality on the ground. The BBC recent Africa Eye documentary, Nigeria: Faith, Fear and Fake News, has done something rare and profoundly important in the coverage of Nigeria’s Plateau crises. it has separated the reality of suffering from the narratives built around that suffering.
One of the most important lessons from the BBC investigation is that truth cannot be manufactured by selecting only the victims who fit a preferred narrative. If you want to tell the story of Plateau, tell all of it.
The most important principle emerging from the BBC documentary is simple: Do not confuse a community with the criminals who operate within or around it. A Fulani pastoralist is not automatically a terrorist because an armed criminal happens to be Fulani. A Christian farmer is not automatically part of a militia because a Christian militia member commits a crime. A Muslim is not responsible for Boko Haram or ISWAP. A Christian is not responsible for the actions of a Christian militia. An entire ethnic group cannot be prosecuted for the crimes of individuals.
Zagazola’s position remains unchanged. The BBC Africa Eye documentary has reinforced something Zagazola has consistently maintained that Nigeria’s security crisis is too complicated to be reduced to a religious slogan.
