WHEN THE BAR SEES ONLY ONE SIDE OF THE BLOODSHED: A REJOINDER TO THE JOINT PRESS STATEMENT OF NBA BRANCHES IN PLATEAU STATE
By Nuhu Ibrahim, Esq. (Talban Juran Kari)
I have read with considerable concern the Joint Press Statement issued on 28 September 2026 by the Chairmen of the Jos, Pankshin, Bukuru and Shendam Branches of the Nigerian Bar Association on the continuing insecurity in Plateau State.
There is much in the statement with which every conscientious Nigerian should agree. Government bears the primary responsibility for protecting life and property. Perpetrators of killings, terrorism, kidnapping, cattle rustling and other violent crimes must be investigated and prosecuted. Security agencies must act professionally and impartially, while victims, irrespective of their identities, deserve justice.
My difficulty, however, is that a statement which so eloquently proclaims the universality of the right to life appears remarkably selective in identifying whose lives have recently been lost.
The communiqué catalogues attacks in Mangu, Barkin Ladi, Riyom and Bokkos and repeatedly invokes “terrorists”, “invaders”, “land grabbing” and even “Fulani militia”. Yet it is conspicuously silent about the innocent Fulani people who have themselves been brutally attacked and killed in the same areas and within the same period.
Only on 20 September, five Fulani men travelling from Bokkos towards Kara Cattle Market in Bukuru were reportedly ambushed and killed around the Kassa axis of Barkin Ladi. Their names were given as Buhari Yusuf, Aminu Ahmad, Nasiru Abdullahi, Gambo Abubakar and Muhammad Abdul Rahman. Their killing was reported publicly. Other attacks upon Fulani herders and their livestock were also reported during the same cycle of violence.
Yet, somehow, none of these victims found a line in this lengthy statement on the sanctity of human life.
That omission is difficult to understand.
If the Nigerian Bar Association declares, as the communiqué does, that “Every Nigerian, regardless of status, ethnicity, religion, or location, has an inviolable right to life and security,” then surely a Fulani life cannot become less inviolable merely because its acknowledgement complicates a preferred narrative.
More disturbing is the communiqué's treatment of self-defence.
Of course, self-defence is recognised by law. But my learned colleagues know—or ought to know—better than most Nigerians that self-defence is not an ethnic blank cheque. It does not authorise collective punishment. It does not permit reprisal attacks. It does not justify killing an innocent herder because another Fulani man committed an atrocity somewhere else. It cannot transform cattle rustling, ambush or murder into lawful conduct merely because the perpetrator claims to be defending his community.
This distinction assumes frightening importance in the Plateau context.
When a communiqué simultaneously paints a picture of “Fulani militia” arriving from several Nigerian States and the Republic of Niger, speaks of “invaders” occupying and renaming communities, and then urges communities to exercise a right of self-defence, what message does an innocent Fulani resident hear?
Who, precisely, is the enemy against whom this communal self-defence is contemplated?
This is not an academic question.
In a society already poisoned by suspicion, careless language can provide moral vocabulary for violence. Once an entire ethnic identity is gradually associated with “terrorists”, “militia”, “invaders” and “land grabbers”, the innocent Fulani herder travelling to market risks ceasing to be seen as a fellow citizen. He becomes, in an already inflamed imagination, part of the enemy.
And once that happens, the distance between lawful self-defence and ethnic reprisal becomes terrifyingly short.
This is why the communiqué, perhaps inadvertently, reinforces an allegation which Plateau's elites ought to be doing everything possible to dispel: that attacks upon innocent Fulani people may sometimes be rationalised, sanitised or excused under the convenient vocabulary of “self-defence”, while attacks attributed to Fulani assailants are immediately described in the language of terrorism, invasion and occupation.
That double standard, if allowed to take root, is itself a threat to peace.
If a Fulani man murders a Berom man, arrest him and prosecute him.
If a Berom man murders a Fulani man, arrest him and prosecute him.
If a Mwaghavul man rustles Fulani cattle, prosecute him.
If a Fulani herder destroys another man's farm or attacks a community, prosecute him.
And where any person genuinely acts in self-defence, let the law determine that defence upon evidence, necessity and proportionality.
The ethnicity of an offender must never determine the vocabulary with which his crime is described, just as the ethnicity of a victim must never determine whether his corpse deserves public outrage or institutional silence.
There is another uncomfortable dimension.
The communiqué refers specifically to Kassa among the affected communities. Yet contemporary reporting of the recent Kassa violence described the killing there as a suspected reprisal occurring only hours after a Fulani herder had reportedly been killed and livestock rustled around the Barkin Ladi–Mangu axis.
Let nobody misunderstand me: reprisal killing is murder. Nothing done to a Fulani herder can justify murdering an innocent Berom, just as nothing done by a Berom criminal can justify murdering an innocent Fulani.
But that is precisely the point.
A body of lawyers genuinely interested in ending the cycle cannot narrate the second killing magnificently while the first disappears from the story. Justice cannot begin its chronology at the point most convenient to one side.
I am therefore particularly disappointed that this came from branches of the Nigerian Bar Association.
The Bar is not the Berom Bar Association.
It is not the Mwaghavul Bar Association.
It is not the Fulani Bar Association.
It is the Nigerian Bar Association, and its moral authority in a conflict of this nature must derive from an almost stubborn impartiality.
Our profession teaches us to interrogate evidence, resist prejudice, protect minorities, insist upon individual responsibility and refuse collective guilt. The Bar should therefore be the last institution to reproduce—consciously or otherwise—the ethnic stereotypes that have helped keep Plateau trapped in recurring bloodshed.
The solution to Plateau's tragedy cannot be to replace one victimhood narrative with another. There have been innocent Christian victims. There have been innocent Muslim victims. There have been innocent Berom victims. There have been innocent Fulani victims. Their blood does not acquire different colours according to the tribe or religion of the person bleeding.
I therefore respectfully invite my learned colleagues who signed this communiqué to look again at their own concluding declaration:
“Every Nigerian, regardless of status, ethnicity, religion, or location, has an inviolable right to life and security.”
Beautiful words.
But those words must include Buhari Yusuf, Aminu Ahmad, Nasiru Abdullahi, Gambo Abubakar and Muhammad Abdul Rahman—the five Fulani men reportedly murdered while travelling to market.
They must include the Fulani teenager tending cattle.
They must include the Berom farmer on his farm.
They must include the Mwaghavul villager sleeping in his home.
They must include every innocent person.
Otherwise, universality becomes rhetoric and justice becomes tribal arithmetic.
The Plateau crisis has lasted far too long for influential institutions to continue speaking in ways capable of reinforcing the fears of one community while validating the grievances of another. Lawyers should be dismantling stereotypes, not lending them jurisprudential vocabulary.
Count every corpse.
Mourn every victim.
Investigate every allegation.
Prosecute every murderer.
And condemn every atrocity by exactly the same standard.
That is justice.
That is the rule of law.
And that, rather than a dangerously elastic invocation of communal “self-defence”, is the contribution I expect from the Nigerian Bar Association towards lasting peace on the Plateau.
Nuhu Ibrahim, Esq.
Talban Juran Kari
Kaduna State
