The heinous, cowardly and genocidal attacks by armed men on three villages near Jos, Plateau State in the early hours of last Sunday was an outrage, a calculated attack on efforts to consolidate a fragile peace in crisis-torn Plateau State and a most despicable onslaught on human life, including the lives of women, children and the aged. Estimates of casualties from Sunday's episode already include hundreds killed and many hundreds wounded.

From all indications so far, the attacks on the three villages of Dogo Nahawwa, Ratsat and Zot in Shen District of Jos South Local Government were carried out by Fulani pastoralists to avenge for their community's losses during the last sectarian crises of January 25-27 in the same state.

It is noteworthy that in the wake of the last orgy of violence in Jos, which itself included the genocidal wiping out of many defenceless villagers by those alleged to be their neighbours, the Fulani pastoral community's leaders meticulously compiled figures of herdsmen and their family members said to have been killed in various villages and locations around Jos. The pastoralists' leaders made a convincing public case of the casualties they suffered, according to them in the hands of Berom attackers. They also made an interesting point that they were specially aggrieved because the pastoralists were not an interested party in the many political, social, commercial and property conflicts between the Berom natives and the Hausa "settlers" in and around Jos.

But while the pastoralists' urban-based leaders were making this convincing case, the pastoralists' widely-dispersed, tradition-steeped community [with or without the leaders' knowledge] was planning a major outrage as revenge for the January killings, which they unleashed on the three Berom villages on Sunday.

No one as yet knows for sure where the attackers came from. Some of the victims estimated the number of attackers as several hundred, who fired guns into the air to force villagers out of their houses, and then proceeded to kill defenceless men, women and children with cudgels and machetes. They also set fire to whole villages, before they vanished in the night.

That such an attacking force could be assembled and could launch an attack only a few kilometres away from Jos metropolis so soon after the last orgy of violence, when the state is still bristling with soldiers and other security agents, and when a 6pm to 6am curfew was still in force in Jos, indicates a monumental failure of intelligence and security in Plateau State. It is true that the pastoralists' knowledge of the rural terrain is unsurpassed, but then, given their community's dispersed nature, it is baffling indeed that they could assemble such a large army and move it into position for the attack without anyone noticing it.

Besides, all political and traditional authorities in Nigeria ought to know that vengeance is a deeply ingrained matter in pastoral communities' traditions. Pastoralists are known to avenge for wrongs done even to their grandfathers. That no security and intelligence measures were put in place to guard against possible reprisal attacks, given that the pastoral community very widely publicised its grievances after the January violence, was another monumental failure on the part of the authorities.

Still, in adhering to their age-old traditions and carrying out this heinous act in the name of revenge, the pastoral community around Jos has robbed itself of the moral high ground after the January crisis and may have sown the seeds for more inter-communal bitterness and suspicion in years and generations to come.

Even though the attackers melted away into the night soon after their cowardly deed, it is not too late for the military, policemen and intelligence agents to trace them and apprehend as many of the attackers as they can. They should be made to answer for their crimes in order to convince all other individuals and communities that are planning similar revenge attacks that this will not be tolerated in a modern, civilized country.

Yet, it is very important to remind the authorities that despite the complications of old customs and traditions in Nigeria, no one would have contemplated revenge attacks if the perpetrators of the many inter-communal outrages in Jos over the years had been swiftly apprehended and brought to answer for their crimes.

Daily Trust, for example, editorially advised the authorities [Monday, January 25, 2010] to set an example after the genocidal attacks at Kuru Karama village by swiftly bringing the perpetrators to book since, as in most inter-communal killings, the victims could identify the attackers. In that attack hundreds of men, women and children were killed with scores of bodies dumped in wells in the affected area. Nothing has so far been done about that incident with some section of the society in denial of the bestiality that happened there. And unless the authorities draw the line and for once bring the culprits of this massacre to book, there is nothing to prevent others from contemplating similar "revenge" attacks in the near future. Leaders at all levels must stop this madness which robs us of our collective humanity and leaves us all covered with the blood of the innocent on our conscience.