THE MISFORTUNE OF DURA, LO-PAMDYET AND LATYA COMMUNITIES OF JOS SOUTH

In 2004, I bought some plots of land in Latya, a community closed to Lo-Pamdyet (remember the community in Du District of Jos South where fourteen people were mowed down by trigger-happy unknown gunmen a few weeks ago?). For many years I built my house block by block until we packed into the house in January of 2012. When I moved into the community, I discovered that I was not the only one who built there – we have Yorubas, Goemais, Jabbas, Kagoros, Irigwes, Mwaghavuls, Ngas, Urhobos, Igbos, Bachamas, Jukuns, Tarohs, Michikas, Kuleres, Kare-Kares, Madas, Mhiships, Okuns, Igbiras, Rons, as well as many other tribes who built there. And we are all there today as neighbors.

When people were killed by gunmen in that community, we collectively lost about 8 people who were friends and neighbors – an Igbo, Michika and many others. Some who died there that night were passersby. As a community we mourned and wept while burying our dead comrades. Since that fateful day, our community became a ghost town. Shops no longer open and the camaraderie we once shared vanished as we began to close our gates and homes as early as 5pm from friends and neighbors.

While we were on this, the news came that a missing General had been traced to Dura (about a kilometer away from Lo-Pamdyet). Eventually the missing car of the General was found in a pond in Dura. And as I write this now, most families have evacuated themselves from Latya, Lo-Pamdyet and Dura because of the rumor that the military is planning to mete out to these communities the treatment Zaki-biam and Odi towns suffered. Some are saying (mischievously and erroneously) that “Birom people are terrorists’ and should be wiped out because the car of the missing General was found in their community.

I have a problem with this generalization. Not all Birom people are bad. In every tribe we have some few bad people. Should we then generalized and label a tribe evil? Should we even call for the extermination of a whole community because we think that if the military does that they would only be killing the Biroms? What about those of us whose only sin is buying land and building in this area? And how are we really sure that some people didn’t tow the vehicle to this place to give the community a bad name and a reason to wipe it out? So many questions that beg for answers.

To those of you calling for the wiping out of the community, you are also sentencing so many innocent and decent families like my own and others to death. It is painful to watch widows and families running to my house every evening to sleep or ask if they should run away. And they are not “Biroms”!

All I can say is that God sees and knows best what actually happened to General Alkali. And I weep with his family as they live with this huge and painful suspense. But if we die in Latya, Lo-Pamdyet and Dura as many people are advocating for, let it be known we were murdered for a sin hundreds of us knew and know nothing about. Some of us have no other place to locate to because we don’t have moneys to build another house somewhere far from “the much hated Birom People”. They accommodated and sold land for us to build our houses. If houses were moveable, the. We would have moved.

May the Government of Lalong come to our defense.

Rev Davidson Rotshak Lar JP

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THE MISFORTUNE OF DURA, LO-PAMDYET AND LATYA COMMUNITIES OF JOS SOUTH- Rev Davidson Rotshak Lar JP