The Plateau State Government has expressed deep dissatisfaction with the Nigerian Army over its failure to apprehend the assailants responsible for the killing of 27 farmers in Tahoss community, Riyom Local Government Area, during an attack earlier this week.
The state’s Commissioner for Information, Joyce Ramnap, speaking Friday on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, questioned why soldiers failed to arrest or neutralize any of the suspected killer herdsmen, despite reportedly making close contact with them during the incident.
“The checkpoint is barely 200 meters from where this incident happened,” Ramnap said.
“The response we got was that none were arrested and none were captured. None of those killed were affected by all that happened.”
She emphasized that the attacked community was near an access road with existing military checkpoints, making the army’s lack of arrests even more troubling.
“It is not a hidden community that we would say it is far, and that is why the people were not able to access help,” she noted.
Ramnap was cautious not to generalize, clarifying that not all army personnel were at fault, but stressed the need for greater accountability.
“We do not want to stereotype and say that the entire Army compromised in this case,” she said.
“However, there is room to do more investigation, and the governor specifically requested that at least they should have some form of arrest.
“If you are that close and you engaged them closely like that, you should be able to say this is where they followed and the measures to arrest them, but so far, no arrest has been made,” she added.
The commissioner described the recent killings as unprovoked and despicable, saying the attackers not only kill residents but also destroy crops in the affected communities.
She also reinforced comments by Governor Caleb Mutfwang, who visited the site of the massacre on Wednesday.
The governor had described the wave of killings as a “genocide” against the people of Plateau.
“Like the governor has said, we have gallant soldiers in the country, we also have them within Plateau State that are making their efforts to ensure that there is peace on the Plateau, but of course, we still have the bad eggs among them,” Ramnap stated.
She revealed that the attackers struck from three different directions. While one side of the community managed to repel the invaders, another near a church where villagers were hiding, suffered the worst casualties.
“The attacks came from three different sides of the community. One side was able to contain them and ensure that nothing happened.
The other side that was closest to the place where the people were hiding in the church, those were the ones that were worst hit, and that is why we got that number of casualties,” she said.
“The pastor of that church, at a point, said he would not stay there and wait for them to kill him as well. He left, and his wife followed him, and right in his house, six people were killed.”
The latest violence adds to a disturbing pattern of mass killings across Plateau State in recent months.
In April 2025, more than 100 residents were murdered in coordinated attacks on Bokkos and Bassa local government areas, a tragedy that drew both national and international condemnation.
That massacre followed the Christmas Eve 2023 attacks, in which about 150 people were killed in Bokkos, marking one of the deadliest episodes in the state’s history of communal violence.
