Early last Wednesday morning, March 17, a Muslim mob swept through the Christian villages of Biye and Batem in central Nigeria. At least 13 dead. At least a dozen homes burned. Machetes. Children and pregnant women among the dead. Tongues cut from the corpses. All the usual horrors.
And all the usual responses. The state governor, Jonah Jang, declared (according to the African news service This Day) that the government is “taking necessary measures and exploring all possible avenues,” without having much to say about what those measures and avenues might be. The state police carefully explained that the responsibility for security lies with the military. And the military reacted by issuing a press statement—an extraordinary document which somehow managed both to insist that “but for the timely intervention of troops deployed at the Riyom area, carnages would have been carried out in the two communities” and to admit, a paragraph later, that at least “nine people were killed at Biye while 13 houses were burnt in both communities before the arrival of the troops.”
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