Dalung Warns Of ‘Zamfara Style’ Terrorist Takeover In Plateau
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung, has warned that Plateau State risks coming under terrorist occupation similar to the situation in Zamfara, where communities were displaced and armed groups control large swathes of land.
In an exclusive interview with THE WHISTLER, Dalung described the situation in Plateau as “ideologically driven terrorism” and a “genocidal campaign” targeting ancestral communities for land and resource seizure.
THE WHISTLER had reported that over 100 people were killed during weeks of attacks across rural communities in Bokkos and Bassa Local Government Areas of Plateau State.
The crisis prompted the Nigerian Air Force to evacuate hundreds of students from the Air Force Military School and Air Force Girls Military School in Jos.
Dalung traced the roots of the conflict to political tensions in the early 2000s.
“The crisis began when appointments into federal agencies sparked clashes between indigenous and settler communities and that led to the first round of the crises,” he explained.
“By 2010, the violence had morphed from open urban clashes into guerrilla warfare. It went into a low-key warfare where you began to see guerrilla attacks on rural communities, people were being killed across the state,” he recounted.
While the violence was initially blamed on farmer-herder clashes, Dalung argued that such narratives concealed a deeper problem.
He said the state has been “consistently naive,” often reducing the crisis to political, ethnic, or religious conflict while armed groups continue expanding their control. According to Dalung, over 64 communities are now reportedly under the control of terrorists.
“Once they attack a community, they eliminate anything living. They kill men, they kill women, they kill children, pregnant women, old men — everything is destroyed,” he said.
He further warned that the attacks are not random but part of an ideological and economically motivated campaign to seize land.
“From my understanding of the situation, we are dealing with terrorism and terrorist elements that are ideologically driven terrorism, and motivated by genocidal killings to grab land. Now, what would be the purpose of grabbing land? Do they intend to inherit the land? Certainly not,” he said.
“Those are people whose identity seems to be coming from very far away. So they are rather being sponsored by some interest to displace these people so that they can exploit the mineral deposit because these places are so rich in agricultural, arable land, rich in mineral deposits, and rich in forest reserves.
“These are criminals, terrorists sponsored by certain people who are trying to eliminate communities and dispose of their land, because whoever is sponsoring them does not want to pay royalties.”
He drew comparisons with the security situation in Zamfara and ongoing efforts to curb it, saying: “what is now playing out is that terrorists are capitalising on the vulnerability of the people of Plateau. The People of Plateau are so vulnerable when it comes to sentiment. Yes, so when you raise ethnic sentiments, they are vulnerable. The worst information is religion. They will not even ask two questions, they will believe whatever you say, hook, line, and sinker and go out to fight for it, whether it is correct or not.
“We have been trying to make sure that non-indigenous communities that have a history of long stay in Plateau and share maybe ethnic similarities or religion with some of these criminals are integrated.
“We try to maintain a level of awareness so that people should understand that, we are not attacking identities but specifically narrow our concentration on the very group of criminals that are in the forest, whether they are of the Fulani extraction, whether they are of a religion that is shared commonly with Islam, whether Muslims on the Plateau.
“So we are trying to ensure that we don’t assist the criminals in locating this conflict in the community because that is their intention. We will help them (the communities) in fighting while they (the criminals) continue with their intention of grabbing land.”
Dalung stressed, “The people are not united, they are divided. And that could aid the realignment of communities with criminals to protect their interests. It has happened in another conflict across the world [where] criminals relocated into a community and then the community got divided and started fighting itself.
“And either of the sides will now beg for protection just like what is happening in Zamfara with the Lakurawa, who are terrorists from the Sahelian terrorists like Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, who have found their way into Nigeria.”
Dalung further criticised the federal government’s handling of the situation, citing alleged lack of prosecutions and political interference in security decisions.
“One of the greatest challenges of the plateau conflict situation is that impunity reigns supreme. All the reports of the Commission of Inquiry since 2001 indicted some persons who have been arrested, but none of them have been prosecuted and convicted.
“So, that is the major enabler of the Plateau crisis. Not even this sentiment we’re talking about.
“Security is completely the business of the federal government, the control of the instrument of coercion. The attitude of the federal government, from my personal view, is that they are playing politics with security.
“Because if you look, the governors now are too uncertain about what will happen next. So some of them are now migrating to the ruling party. Just like Senator Adams Oshiomhole said, anybody who joins the APC, his sins, or even looting the central bank, is forgiven.
“They (the governors) are more confused. So instead of thinking out of the box on how to deal with the problem, they are busy running to Abuja to try to see the son of their president.”
Dalung Warns Of ‘Zamfara Style’ Terrorist Takeover In Plateau is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
