Dr. Longgul Dakwom writes from Jos, plateau State, Nigeria.
Curfew is a relic of the barracks, and it was never designed for governing a free people. The word comes from the French couvre-feu, “cover fire.” It began as a medieval bell that told households to bank their hearths at night so that timber towns would not burn.
By the twentieth century, the curfew had become a standard tool of martial law. For example, Ferdinand Marcos ordered one in the Philippines the day after declaring martial law in 1972, with arrests for anyone found outside.
Poland’s martial-law rulers did the same in December 1981, and their militia arrested people found on the streets at night.
Why do rulers reach for it?
Because it is cheap and easy to enforce. It empties the night so that anyone still moving is, by definition, a suspect. Soldiers do not need to know who the attackers are. They only need a clock. It also lets a government say it has acted within hours of a tragedy. That logic fits a city whose streets are full of rioters. It fits poorly a farming countryside raided by armed men who know the terrain.
A quarter-century of the same tool
Plateau has tried it repeatedly. In September 2001, after the Jos riots that left more than a thousand dead, Governor Joshua Dariye declared a 24-hour curfew and soldiers were posted at major junctions. Residents said the attacks continued into the night.
In November 2008, Governor Jonah Jang imposed a 24-hour curfew on four districts of Jos, and soldiers were permitted to shoot on sight. Human Rights Watch alleged that soldiers and police carried out more than 130 extrajudicial killings in the response. More than 500 people were arrested, yet state officials said no one was successfully prosecuted.
Jos saw three major riots within ten years, in 2001, 2008 and 2010. Commissions of inquiry into the Jos crises were set up, but campaigners say their recommendations were never implemented, and a Joint Task Force later gave way to Operation Safe Haven.
In June 2018, after gunmen struck Barkin Ladi, Riyom and Jos South, Lalong imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and a civil society forum accused him of complacency.
About 250 lives were lost. A recent FIJ investigation described the routine that followed each such attack: a curfew from the governor, then arrests and troop reinforcements announced by the military, with the same language repeated under President Tinubu.
Each curfew was sold as stabilisation, and the killing outlived every one of them.
What I saw on the road
On Sunday, the day before the announcement, I passed through Barkin Ladi. People were in terrible fear. Many were sending their women and children to Jos, and there were no vehicles on the road to carry them.That is the situation into which the government stepped on Monday 21 September 2026 , with a dusk-to-dawn curfew from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM and a ban on motorcycles. I understand the logic, since attackers have been reported arriving on motorbikes. But where vehicles are already scarce, the same order closes off another way a family might move. It also tells a frightened household to stay indoors from 6:00 PM, in the very houses they were trying to leave.The message that reaches the ordinary man is blunt: “Yakubu should manage and die.” Is this the best a government can do?
The question is not only for the man in Government House, Barr. Caleb Mutfwang, It is for everyone who has watched the same order issued, again and again, since 2001.
The change Plateau voted for Simon Lalong’s administration ran that routine, and it was the administration Plateau voted against. Mutfwang won the 2023 election, and the Supreme Court later confirmed it.
“The Time is Now” was more than a slogan. It was a promise that the old handling of Plateau’s blood-letting would end.
What “new” has looked like
The record since is a sequence of curfews and condolences. In July 2023, the governor imposed a 24-hour curfew on Mangu. In January 2024, another Mangu attack left at least 30 dead and brought another dusk-to-dawn curfew. In August 2024, Gov. Mutfwang imposed a 24-hour curfew on Jos/Bukuru.In April 2025, after the Bassa killings, he told the victims’ community: “we failed you.” The admission was honest, but honesty is not a security plan.
The same month, President Tinubu publicly urged Gov. Mutfwang to summon the political power to end the crisis.Then came March 2026. Gunmen killed at least 28 people in Angwan Rukuba, Jos. The government imposed a 48-hour curfew, and the governor spoke of “urban terrorism” and the need to move “from reactive responses to proactive, intelligence led operations.” It was the right diagnosis.
The president summoned Gov. Mutfwang to Abuja soon after. Six months later, nine commuters were killed in an ambush at Dungus Junction in Kuru, with further attacks in Mangu and Riyom.
The government’s answer was a curfew. If reactive responses were the disease in March, a reactive curfew in September is hard to call the cure.The curfew that misses the hour of attack. Consider what the curfew does. It confines farmers and traders in three of the state’s hardest-hit councils for twelve hours, and it comes with a ban on motorcycles. Yet survivors of the 2025 Bokkos attacks des7cribe assaults in daylight. One villager said the shooting began around 3:45 p.m. while people went about their normal activities. A village head said gunmen arrived on motorcycles around 3:00 p.m.A dusk-to-dawn order burdens the law-abiding, who obey it, far more than the killers, who do not. Locals said as much about the Lalong-era curfew in Mangu in 2023, calling it ineffective. Nothing suggests this one will differ.The barracks nobody staffed.
The clearest picture of the gap between announcement and action comes from the state’s own leadership. This month, the Deputy Governor pleaded for the Mobile Police Barracks in Gashish, Barkin Ladi, to be activated, noting that it has remained dormant since it was established. The governor made the same appeal to the Inspector-General of Police, calling the facility strategically located for Barkin Ladi, Mangu and Bokkos.Those are the very councils now under curfew. A building meant to project security liesj idle while a curfew is drawn instead. Residents have grown weary of it. Some describe “rhetorical press statements” that follow each attack without the violence ending.
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On January 2, 2026, Mutfwang left the PDP for the APC at a ceremony attended by former governor Simon Lalong. He pledged to deliver “one million more votes” for President Tinubu in 2027. The APC national chairman who welcomed him was Nentawe Yilwatda, the man he beat in the 2023 governorship election. The PDP called the move a betrayal of public mandate.I cannot read the governor’s heart, only his calendar. Critics will say the calendar shows a man consolidating for 2027.
The Guardian has observed that political leaders in the state seem largely consumed by power struggles while the security crisis worsens. A governor who won as the alternative to Lalong’s record now shares a party, and a stage, with Lalong. It is fair to ask whether the “old ways” are being kept because they are the ones his new political home understands.
To be Fair state governors do not command the police or the military, and Operation Safe Haven is a federal formation. Mutfwang has pressed for a state police, convened former governors, including Lalong, on the security crisis, and publicly accepted responsibility, which is rare in Nigerian politics. A curfew can buy time to stabilise a volatile area.But time bought must be spent. The governor’s own words in March set the standard: proactive, intelligence-led, fundamentally rethought.
My I’ll Measured against it, Monday’s order is the reactive script with a new signature.What Plateau is owedActivate the Gashish barracks now, and account publicly for why it sat idle. Publish what the March “rethink” changed on the ground, including early-warning systems, community intelligence and response times. Prosecute attackers and their sponsors, since the governor himself said “they are known.” And stop treating a governor’s duty to protect lives as a footnote to the 2027 timetable.”The Time is Now” was a promise. For the people of Barkin Ladi, Bokkos and Mangu, it has become a measure.
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