In a nation grappling with persistent insecurity, particularly across the Middle Belt, Redzie Jugo, founder of the Srarina Initiative for Peace, Justice and Development, stands out as an advocate for justice, accountability, and community resilience.

Drawing on his years as coordinator of the National Day of Mourning in Plateau State, Jugo highlights the need for a reimagined security architecture—one that empowers vulnerable communities within the bounds of the law to defend themselves against armed attacks in this interview with The ICIR.

The ICIR: What are some of the works you’ve done recently about insecurity, particularly with the Middle Belt?

Redzie Jugo: I have been the coordinator for the National Day of Mourning in Plateau State for the last five or six years, approximately. And it has largely been to bring attention to the pogrom, the genocide that is going on, but not taken very seriously by the authorities, both individuals and associations of like minds, whether in-country or overseas.

Now we have tried to ensure that we document ways and means of also getting this to stop. In time past, it has largely been about calling attention to the government, holding government accountable, and setting up memory plaques or walls that look and celebrate the lives of people who were killed needlessly by terrorists in our villages, in our localities. We decided that in recent times we needed to move further than the place we have been. To ask our questions, what kind of solutions can we give beyond getting the rebuttals? Because every time we get rebuttals from the government. Rebuttals, for instance, that speak to the police are overstretched, and that the military formations can only do so much.

And we have said, we understand that you’re overstretched and on demand, why don’t you look at getting a security architecture that leans into the already existing security protocols in those vulnerable villages that get pillaged every time and time again. Why don’t you look at the Firearms Act again and take cognisance of the fact that the IG of Police and the President have been given the sole right of making sure that people, the victims of vulnerable communities can have access to those firearms so that they can safeguard themselves and so that they can see another day. Ten years ago, we started having this conversation, but it wasn’t politically correct, and a lot of people shied away from it.

I spoke to a couple of members of the National Assembly, and it was not something they wanted to speak about. In 2025-2024, we have the DSS chief speaking about it in a public forum, talking about the first line charges or the first line of defence. Now you have the conversations that are slowly coming up.

Why is that? Because as we speak today, you may not find one military or one police individual right now in a Kemapa community in a village of Basa LGA in Plateau State. So the question ultimately is, do we keep allowing people to die off, or do we get ourselves up and think, because we understand also that there are questions about the proliferation of arms and ammunition, and what happens to the individuals who are allowed to safeguard themselves today? What will they be tomorrow?

Our organisation has said, let us come together and think through it, and be able to get protocols to expand the security architecture as it stands today. We’re not asking for a different thing. No, we’re asking for an expansion.

The ICIR: How will this work?

Say you set up a directorate under the army or the police that will do a mapping of vulnerable communities and be able to figure out who their vigilantes are in those communities. They are subjected to all the rigorous testing from psychological and otherwise. They are subjected to weeks of training, and then they are subjected to training on the use of arms and ammunition.

And that is because some of the times we have seen that except those terrorists know that you can match their military-grade weaponry, you cannot stop them from walking into any village at any time and killing four-year-old children who just wanted to sleep, wake up in the morning and go to the public schools in their communities.

We understand that we cannot get the personnel who can go to Benue LGAs, or can be in Lantang, or can be in Mangu at every point in time, but you can use the locals. You can engage the locals to be able to operate under the auspices of the law.

The ICIR: Some communities have reportedly repelled bandits/ insurgents attacks without formal access to firearms. How do you explain this, and what might have made it possible?

Redzie Jugo: Well, one of the things that Srarina would not do is to advocate for any illegalities. One thing we can always do, and we have always done, is to put a lot of our energies into saying that the laws should be a fortress to vulnerable people and not be their albatross.

As it stands, the Firearms Act is a major albatross around the neck of communities. Why do I say that? The terrorists come into these villages with military-grade weaponry, and they assail and pillage and kill innocent women, children, and men. And soon thereafter, when the community vigilantes gather themselves and they want to repel, because that is all that they can do, repel – even the communities that you are referring to, let us face it, it can only be said that they repelled them.

There are thousands of terrorists with military-grade weapons who are running amok in villages and forests around the place. So imagine that kind of situation. And we are saying that we must do the right thing, and that is to put pressure on the authorities to be able to amend certain policies, certain laws, to be able to allow vulnerable communities to just see another day [have access to arms legally to defend themselves].

So, most of what you have heard so far has been what you would term illegal. Why do I say that? Because, as we speak, the laws do not allow for the purchase and ownership of military-grade weapons. You cannot legally own an AK-47 or a Beretta pistol except you have been permitted by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The only weapons that are allowed by civilians to own are muzzle weapons, one-shot, six-shot pump-action arms.

Now imagine standing next to 10, 15 individuals with AK-47s and other military-grade weapons. You know that that fight was doomed from the beginning. And we’re saying, how else are you going to safeguard these communities that have been pillaged and killed? Just in the Irigwe community alone, from 2001 till date, we are talking about deaths recorded of not less than 1,145 people.

That is just in the Irigwe community. Don’t go to Mangu yet because the conversations and the figures are going to continue to mount. Don’t go to Riyom, don’t go to Bokkos, don’t go to all of those places because you then have to count the number of houses that have been burnt, the number of communities that, as of the last count, it is 145 communities that have been displaced. And some of these communities have been taken over. In some instances, even renamed by the assailant.

I say that because I also happen to be a board of trustees member of one of the communities. And we heard very painfully how some of those communities, the Jol community in Riyom local government, had their names changed.

A week or two after an attack, a man went back to his house. There was somebody living in his house, and there was a woman there. And when he looked flabbergasted at the situation, she quickly advised him to leave the house before her husband comes back.

These things are happening in Nigeria; this is not Afghanistan. It is happening here in Nigeria, just five hours away from Abuja.

The ICIR: Given that amending laws takes time, are there provisions in the current Firearms Act that can be immediately leveraged to improve the security situation?

Redzie Jugo: There are two licensing authorities under the Firearms Act 2004. You have the IG of Police, and then you have the President. Now, my take is, first of all,  there is a need for, unification of all vulnerable states and communities.

In recent times, there have been discordant tunes coming out from the Middle Belt. Governor Alia of Benue State seems to be saying something slightly different from what Governor Mutfwang of Plateau State is saying. But assuming we’re able to get states like that to unify and speak with one voice, they should go to Aso Rock and have conversations with our President. Because he is empowered under the law to give permission. Because he is also the chief of the armed forces. He has been given the right to be able to give permission.

And we are saying it has to be systematic. We don’t think that things should be done haphazardly and to give room for abuse. It can be systematically done. He can call his CDS and have an interface with his security chief, the NSA. With the governors of these vulnerable states. And they can agree on the format to be able to ensure that all vulnerable communities are able to bring out their fit young men who are able to be able to form what may be called civilian JTF or by any other nomenclature.

Like I said, a directory can be set up in the army, especially for that. Our military is well-trained, and they can also train these individuals. And then reports can be given on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on all of the weaponry that has been deployed to those vulnerable communities.

I believe that if you do that, even the knowledge that these communities are not as vulnerable as they were will stave off these individuals (assailants).

The ICIR: Won’t this bring up criticism that it will lead to the proliferation of firearms?

Redzie Jugo:  In response to such criticism that comes up that saying it will lead to a proliferation of weapons in those communities, that is why I say the process has to be formalised. These suggestions wouldn’t have come up if we didn’t get the excuses that we’ve been getting about the lack of manpower to be able to cater to every village. This time, we are saying we have men and women in those villages who can do what needs to be done.

The ICIR: And when peace has returned to the communities, what happened to these young persons trained for combat?

Redzie Jugo: To the question of what then happens to them if and when the issues have been sorted out? It’s to find a way to absorb them free of charge. You have already trained them. Absorb them into the police. Absorb them into the army and all the other security agencies.

The ICIR: What is your assessment of Operation Rainbow?

Redzie Jugo:  Operation Rainbow is one of the initial attempts at state police. Successful because it is an entity. It is a legal entity today, before a lot of other states came up with theirs. However, like I said to you, if you see an Operation Rainbow vehicle today, it will have the police and the military behind it. Which means that, .in an actual sense, there is still a condiment that is lacking.

That has a lot to do with these limitations that come with the Firearms Act and everything. If you want things to happen properly, there is a need for the expansion of the security architecture in a formalised manner.

So, my assessment for now is that it can do so much with the way that it was set up and what it can be, but where it is today, it can do nothing to stave off the violence that is happening in the Middle Belt.

The ICIR: What are the misinformation or disinformation narratives emanating from the insecurity in Plateau State and the Middle Belt?

Redzie Jugo:  The one I dislike the most is ‘Farmer-Herder clash’. There is a four-year-old with a big machete cut. Who did she clash with? I saw a video of a dead mother with a baby still suckling on her breast just the other day. What clash did that baby engage in, or that mother?

There was no clash. There has never been a clash. What we have is a genocide going on. There is a pogrom going on. And except we call it for what it is, it will continue unabated. One thing that the terrorists have that most of these local communities do not have is a well-oiled media machinery.

We believe that even before the attacks, they already had a press release that listed them as victims prepared. A day or two after the massacre in Kimapa, in Kwal Village, somebody was in Kaduna State reading a press release and talking about the death of cows. Yes, one of the other misconceptions people need to understand is that there is a machinery for misinformation that has been running for decades.

When you see terrorists who boldly take responsibility and blame communities and use the death of cows as a reason for attacks, then you need to ask yourself why they are still walking freely around the place. In law, you call it a prima facie case.

The was an allegation that cows were poisoned. The cows were not on a ranch, and someone took a poisoned bag of food to the ranch and poisoned them. No, the cows went into a farm and ate food that had pesticides, herbicides, and they died. This allegation is even unfounded because when the cows were found, they were already slaughtered. The conversation was that they were slaughtered so that they would not die prematurely, if there is any such thing. The same cows were taken and sold in the markets by their owners.

There is a lot of twisting of truths, half-truths, and outright malicious lies being told so that assailants get some level of sympathy that they do not deserve.

There is a war going on to take over the Nigerian state, and except we see it for what it is, this war will reach every locality. And Nigeria, as we know it today, will become the Central African Republic tomorrow, or Libya, or Afghanistan, name them.

The ICIR: In the line of your work, what have been the peculiarities of these attacks over the years in Middle-belt, mostly in Plateau State?

You know, I mentioned Gashish, in Barkin Ladi, the local government of Plateau State. You only need to go to Gashish. Gashish is a lush land. You remember, in speaking to the reasons why these attacks are happening?

I’ll refer you to something I mentioned earlier, about the killing of over 200 people in one night. In Gashish, in Barkin Ladi, the local government of Plateau State. You only need to go to Gashish to see how beautiful that place looks.

Lush greens, water bodies, and waterfalls. That is the price. People also forget that Mafarkin Mota is in a part of Jos North local government.

Mafarkin mota has also been overrun. It is a beautiful place. Greeneries, mineral deposits.

I’ve had one or two people who were killed in those places. There was a young man who was doing some work for me. We even saw in the evening that he went to harvest sand for sale.

There is a community not too far from there where he was shot at. And he died. All of the places where these attacks and killings have happened, check them.

They have great land, great potential for vegetation. They have multiple mineral deposits under the ground.

And even the style of banditry, as it is called in Wase local government. Wase local government is one of the most mineralised local governments in Plateau State. The style of banditry in Zamfara State is what is inching in there.

And I say this also because I have done some work in the mineral sector. So these are things that I’m very aware of. These are things I’m well-versed in.

As students, we paid our school fees by working in that sector. So some of these places I’m talking about, and that is how I’ve been able to traverse some of these places in Plateau State, Bauchi State, Gombe State, Taraba State, Zamfara State and Abakaliki. I’ve been to all of these places and I know firsthand what it looks like.

And I know how lucrative those places are. And that is why you see conversations being had about gold for guns. So these are the reasons.

It is not a senseless drivel of gunshots and testing of armaments. No, it is a land grab on the move. It is a programme to take over people’s land without paying for it, without an exchange of money or whatever it is, even by barter, nothing. There’s a story about someone with whom they had disagreements, about land.

And then he came to confront the people. They came back and looked for him. They didn’t find him, but they killed people in his community, and his family.

They’ll take it by force. That’s what is going on, and let us call it by its name.