By Palang Paul
In the dusty sprawl of Plateau State’s internally displaced persons camps, there is no celebration. There are only hungry children, desperate women, and men who once fed entire communities with the bounty of their ancestral farmlands-lands they can no longer touch.
Five years ago, Mangut Alfred, Micah Mallo, and David Arandong were farmers. Today, they are coordinators of the displaced-a title none of them ever wanted.
They speak for thousands who have been chased from their homes in Bokkos Local Government Area by Fulani bandits and land grabbers, huddled in squalid camps while their fertile fields lie fallow and are occupied by herdsmen who do not farm.
“We have been forced to live like destitutes, begging for food to eat,” the three leaders wrote in an open letter to Governor Caleb Mutfwang on Monday, just two days before his 61st birthday. “Our children have turned into beggars and our wives and daughters have resorted to prostitution all in a bid to survive.”
The letter was a plea-desperate, public, and timed to the approaching rainy season when planting should begin. “Those Fulani bandits who are currently occupying our fertile lands are not farmers,” they argued. “Our lands are begging to be cultivated.”
On Wednesday, the governor’s response arrived. It was not a resettlement plan. It was not a security detail to clear the bandits. It was a fleet of brand-new Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs), presented to first-class traditional rulers at the Old Government House in Jos as a “personal gift” marking his birthday.
The ceremony was lavish. Governor Mutfwang, surrounded by dignitaries including Deputy Governor Ngo Josephine Piyo and APC State Chairman Hon. Rufus Bature, described the SUVs as a demonstration of his administration’s “deep respect for the traditional institution.” He announced a dedicated maintenance facility at the Butex Mechanical Workshop to ensure the vehicles’ longevity.
“There is no gainsaying the fact that our traditional rulers have become part of the critical leadership structure of modern society,” the governor told the assembled chiefs.
Da Jacob Gyang Buba, Chairman of the Plateau State Council of Chiefs and Emirs, called the gesture “timely.”
For the displaced farmers of Bokkos, the timing could not have been crueler.
While the governor celebrated with traditional rulers, Alfred, Mallo, and Arandong watched from the camps-if they watched at all. They were too busy trying to keep their people alive.
“We have been forced to live in IDP camps in very deplorable conditions,” their letter stated. “Some of us are living with relatives who themselves barely have enough to feed. We have become beggars in our own state.”
The humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Bokkos reflects patterns seen in conflict zones worldwide.
According to humanitarian guidelines on accountability to affected populations, responses must be “informed by the needs and preferences of affected communities” . Yet the displaced people of Bokkos describe a government that has heard their cries and responded with silence-broken only by the roar of SUV engines headed to traditional rulers’ palaces.
“Over the years, you have promised that your government is doing everything possible to facilitate our return to our ancestral lands,” the leaders wrote to Governor Mutfwang. “However, these promises have all turned out to be false hopes as nothing has been done to achieve this.
The juxtaposition could not be starker.
In Jos, government house officials arranged chairs for royal fathers and polished the new SUVs. Photographers captured the governor’s smile as he handed over keys. Dignitaries offered birthday prayers.
In Bokkos, displaced women weigh impossible choices. “Our wives and daughters have resorted to prostitution to make ends meet,” the leaders’ letter revealed-a detail so painful it is rarely spoken aloud, yet documented here as a cry for help. This reflects what humanitarian organizations recognize as the disproportionate impact of displacement on women, who face elevated risks of exploitation when family and community structures disintegrate .
In Jos, traditional rulers expressed gratitude for “comfort and mobility.”
In Bokkos, able-bodied young men have turned to crime, the leaders said-not out of malice, but survival.
In Jos, the governor spoke of strengthening institutions.
In Bokkos, the most basic institution of all the family farm-lies abandoned.
The displaced people of Bokkos have done their part. They wrote their letter. They named their suffering. They begged, with tears, to return home.
“Your Excellency, we make this appeal with tears in our eyes and the pains of watching our children and families suffer,” they wrote. “We are not lazy people. We have always been industrious and hardworking farmers and we want to go back home and pick up our lives.”
The question is whether their governor will respond-or whether, as the rainy season approaches and the SUVs roll through Jos, their words will join the long list of promises turned to dust.
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