Plateau village attack: Why we returned home a week after – Residents

Residents of the recently attacked villages of Kanam LGA of Plateau State, have started returning to their communities barely one week after they were attacked

Our correspondent reports that gunmen suspected to be bandits had on Sunday, last week, attacked the villages of Kukawa Gyanbahu, Dungur and Keram, where they killed over a hundred people.

Many people were injured while scores of houses were burnt.

Soon after the incident, survivors of the attack fled their homes to neighbouring Garga town and Dangi, the capital of the LGA for safety.

However, a week after the incident, the fleeing residents of the affected villages have begun to return to their homes, saying they had no option but to return to their ancestral homes.

The residents, who returned in large numbers, said they didn’t know anywhere apart from their original villages, adding that they were confident about living in their homes as security personnel were present at the moment.

Adam Musa, a resident of Kukawa, told our correspondent that everywhere around the affected villages was calm and that more than 50 per cent of the residents of the villages had returned to their homes.

He said people were returning on a daily basis; the cattle market was held, and the weekly Juma’a prayer also took place without any problem.

“Our major problem now in the village is for MTN and other service providers to come and restore the service because it helps us to communicate with people outside the villages,” Musa added.

Another resident of the area, Buhari Ibrahim, said they were returning to their homes because security personnel had been deployed to the area and that they didn’t have anywhere apart from their original abodes.

Alh. Dayyabu Garga, the Executive Chairman of Kanam LGA, told Daily Trust that the return of the residents to their villages could be connected to the deployment of security personnel, including soldiers, mobile police and SSS to the areas.