Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State yesterday said Sunday's attack on three communities of Jos South Local Government Area could have been avoided if the army had acted on the security report he transmitted to their commander in the state.

Jang said he got the security report from villagers at about 9 pm on Saturday that some movements of people with arms were seen around the villages and that he immediately reported the matter to the army commanders but nothing was done to prevent the attack.

"The army should live up to expectations and stop the carnage in Plateau, if they cannot, then they should as well get out of the place," he said.

Jang said, "I received reports at about 9 p.m. on the evening that some people with arms were seen around those villages, and I reported to the commander of the army and he told me he was going to move some troops there, and because it is near where I live, I even saw a tank pass through my house and I thought it was going towards that area. Three hours or so later, I was woken by a call that they have started burning the villages and people were being hacked to death. I then tried to locate the commanders but I couldn't get any of them on the telephone."

Jang, who stated this at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, dismissed reports that the attack was a reprisal by some Fulani people who lost their tribesmen and cattle in the January crisis.

He said any attempt to link the latest incident with the January crisis in villages like Kuru Karama and Kuru Jenta was "a distortion of facts."

"To the best of my knowledge, I don't think Fulanis were involved in what happened in Kuru Jenta. I mean everybody who lived there was involved. You could not say it was one-sided because the houses that were burnt cut-across, which means the killings were cut-across. But what happened there, some people moved in Aljazeera and then covered dead bodies and started labelling them," he alleged.

He said the only solution to the recurrent crisis in states was for governors to have full control of security agencies in their respective states.