In a display of resilience, a community in Plateau State, North-Central Nigeria, successfully repelled gunmen during an attempted attack on Wednesday. The targeted area was Butura village in the Bokkos Local Government Area, where the assailants had previously massacred over 150 persons around the Christmas Eve period in 2023.
The gunmen, reportedly riding on motorcycles, encountered strong opposition from a resistant militant group established by the community, as indicated in a tweet by Citizens Observer. However, the Plateau State Police Command contradicted this claim, asserting that its personnel were the ones who repelled the attack.
“Early this morning, while the world’s attention was on the #bomb explosion in Ibadan, the terrorists went for an attack on Butura, a village in Bokkos, the place where they killed over 150 Christians on Christmas eve, but met a formidable resistance from the locals,” the Citizens Observer tweet stated.
The tweet also called on the people of the Middle Belt to arm themselves and defend their land, emphasizing the need to organize against terrorist activities. It urged communities to identify and dismantle terrorist hideouts in their localities.
“The Plateau State Police Command, however, told SaharaReporters that the police and not locals repelled the bandits,” the report clarified.
Alfred Alabo, the spokesperson for the Plateau State Police Command, stated, “Yes, there was a little disturbance there which our men repelled and they repelled dutifully. But we’re still gathering some facts; we want to do that before approaching the media so that we don’t give them wrong information. There’s a lot of fake information going on there.”
The incident follows a coordinated series of attacks on Christmas Eve in parts of Bokkos and Barkin Ladi LGAs, where gunmen killed over 150 persons and wreaked havoc in several communities. The latest resistance by the community reflects a growing determination to protect their land against such violent incursions.
