Letter from Nigeria (2)

See previous post here. A friend has forwarded me this report which arrived last night 24 January 2010.

I guess by now the whole world knows what has been happening in Kuru Jenta. I assume you have read or seen the reports from AFP, Al Jazeera and the BBC, all of which seem to accurately depict the situation in our village. Well over 160 bodies have so far been recovered, but there are still more scattered around the area and it will take some time before the final toll is known. I feel extremely bitter that despite all efforts this needless slaughter was allowed to happen. I sincerely hope that a proper investigation will be carried out by both local and international bodies, that justice will prevail, and those responsible be appropriately punished. Unless this happens we will continue to see endless repetitions of these tragedies.

Our farm is more or less intact. Our store was looted and four of our six water pumps stolen. We have managed to recover most of them. Our crops are still there, but very dry, and need several days of watering before we can start harvesting again.

As you know, our Muslim staff are all gone. We have confirmed that several of them including women and some of the older ones who were security guards have been killed, some of the young ones are in refugee camps with the remains of their families, and some of them are still not accounted for. The condition of the corpses recovered by the Red Cross and military authorities was such that identification is virtually impossible, as they were either burnt, or decomposed in the wells into which they were dumped. So we may never know the actual fate of some of our workers.

We are currently assessing the future of the farm. We have assembled a skeleton staff of some of our old workers, but we have many problems to sort out before things are returned to normal. The Christian staff who are around all had their houses burnt, as the whole village was completely razed, so they have no where to live. They also lost all of their belongings, and need to be resettled, rooms rented for them in nearby settlements, and provided with basic necessities like mattresses, blankets, cooking utensils and clothes for themselves and their children. If we can do this, then they should be able to do a reasonable amount of work on the farm before we can engage some new staff.

Our first priority at the moment is ensuring that those of our staff who are in refugee camps are safely transported to neighbouring states like Bauchi and Kaduna where many of them have relatives they can stay with. It is very painful to see them as refugees, and most of them have lost members of their families. We are trying to raise funds for their transportation, as transport fares around the Jos area are extremely high and buses are very difficult to get.

We will definitely not be able to deliver any vegetables this coming week. But we will use the time to try to get the farm into some reasonable shape, and will let you know before the end of the week whether we will be able to begin delivering the following week,.ie the first week of February. For the past week the banks in Jos have not been functioning, and everyone has run out of cash. The little money we had in hand at the start of the crisis has been used to support our staff who literally have nothing left by way of food or belongings. Petrol is also extremely difficult to come by. So these things will have to normalise somewhat before we are in a position of resume deliveries.We will also have to see if we can recover from the losses we have suffered sufficiently to be able to run the farm.

We would like to thank all of our customers for their support by way of encouragement, and also donations made to the Red Cross and other agencies for the refugees. I know you have all done a lot to help, and all of us at ****** ******do appreciate it very much.

We will keep you up to date with developments, and write again after a couple of days when we see how far we can go this week to revive the farm. We would love to be able to resume deliveries the following week, but as I said, it depends on many factors that are not in our hands.

To all of you who have expressed concern about my own safety and that of our remaining staff, you can put your minds at rest. As of today, there are three armed soldiers posted in front of our house in Jos to prevent any retaliatory attacks. As you know, my name was mentioned prominently in several newspaper accounts and some people here are not very happy with me. But rest assured that we are well protected. I have lived in Nigeria since the Civil War, and have seen many things here, so this is by no means my first experience of crisis. But it has certainly been one of the most traumatic because of my personal involvement with the people concerned.

Letter from Nigeria (1)

This was forwarded to me by a friend on 20 January 2010. There are two separate authors of this report.

'We are having problems in Jos. There was a lot of fighting in parts of the town yesterday, and we are under dusk to dawn curfew. The army and mobile police are patrolling the streets and there is still a lot of shooting.'

As you know there were a lot of problems there in the summer - (one of my contacts was on his way up to Kaduna last summer before getting a phone call from his employer to turn back immediately or face certain death at the hands of the rioters). I suspect that it has been sparked by the BBC report on Yar Adua's health which has been widely screened and commented upon here. There is a great deal of unease on both sides about the 'Northern Agenda' and the possibility that the presidency will not rotate as it is supposed to do. The press here is pretty robust about Goodluck Jonathan, the VP, and his apparent vaccilations while the 'man on top of the Abuja omnibus' is getting pretty nervous about the forthcoming elections. The first new posters have been pasted up over the weekend here and their are rumours of a stitch up by the elite. No one seems to be talking about a military coup though - there does not seem to be any soldier with sufficient stature.

Sorry about this but a powercut wiped out the some of the message. It is a fact of life here - although we do have water most of the time.

The problems up in Jos have piled up in recent years. This area is basically a Christian area with fertile land producing for the capital. As the north has gradually become more arid, Muslims have moved south and are now competing for the available land. The weather this year has been awful with the rains that should have finished in September going on well into November with the cooling Harmattan being rather weaker than usual too. This has meant that a lot of the crop has simply washed away or rotted in the fields. Storage facilities and greenhouses have collapsed under the weight of water and prices in the market have been incredibly high - a cauliflower in Abuja was selling at 12 quid a go before Xmas.

The moves to adopt Sharia law ever further south has also had its effect. Christian churches here bear no resemblance to those in Europe but are far more 'Evangelical' and unregulated than elsewhere. Pastors depend on their parishioners for their income - tithes are a part of life here - and are more than able to raise tensions when they feel that their incomes and livlihoods might be at risk. Similarly, militant mosques are also a feature.

So far there has not been a spill over into the capital - despite the BBC's attempt to portray a rather feeble routine demo as a serious attempt to destabilise the country. The fact that the Xmas bomber was a Nigerian has also raised tensions somewhat; Nigerians are patriotic, dislike being put on US 'watch lists' and there is inevitably a level of support for Al Queda at street level - but nothing widespread as to make a westerner feel uncomfortable as yet.

Needless to say, no-one is looking forward to an election. And there is a residual longing in some quarters for a return to military rule. Abachi was not universally unpopular here.

This morning I received this news:

"We awoke to hear heavy gunfire in several areas of Jos, and saw a lot of smoke from burning buildings. The gunfire continued for several hours, and sounds like heavy artillery was being used. It is like being at a warfront.

The government has now announced that the Jos area is under 24 hour curfew, so no one can leave their house. At this point the gunfire has quieted down somewhat, but is still sporadic.

"We are receiving terrible news from the village , called Kuru Jenta, on the way to Jos Airport Evidently the village has been set on fire and the Muslims in the village, including our workers some of whom are Muslims, have been surrounded and fear they are about to be executed. We have tried unsuccessfully to reach army and police authorities in Jos. Please, if any of you in Abuja have access to any authorities who can help stop this situation we would very much appreciate it."

"According to reports, all of the Muslim houses in Kuru were burnt, and most of the Muslims were killed. Only a few are still alive. Although the person I spoke with (one of our farm staff) was naturally upset and a bit confused, he told me that he believed that except for himself, the other Muslim members of staff of the farm were all killed, along with many other inhabitants of the village.He along with his wife and children were injured but managed to escape, and at that point (this evening) he was attempting to walk through the bush to get to the Police Staff College, which he felt was the nearest place of refuge where they could be safe.

At Kuru, there was not a fight between groups, as had been the case in Jos. Muslim inhabitants were rounded up and shot or burnt in their houses. As I said, I have yet to see for myself, but I received the same report from both Muslim and Christian staff and have no reason to doubt its veracity. Only that I am not sure of the details of the exact number killed."