He Was Walking to Church at Dorowa Babuje on Sunday Morning. The Night Before, Five Labourers Died on the Road to Gana-Ropp. By Noon the Women and Children Were Leaving the Village, and Nobody in Uniform Was Answering the Phone.
Nine died in Barkin Ladi and Riyom between Saturday night and Sunday morning: five labourers on the road to Gana-Ropp, a pastor on his way to church at Dorowa Babuje. At noon the gunfire had not stopped and the women and children were walking out. By evening, a red alert.
The pastor did not get to church.
He was on the road to Dorowa Babuje on Sunday morning, September 20, in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State, when the gunmen found him. He died there with one other person. Vanguard's correspondent in Jos, Golok Nanmwa, had the two deaths on the record by mid morning. No outlet has yet printed the pastor's name, or the name of his church, and this dispatch will not guess at either.
That made two of nine.
Five had died the night before. They were passengers travelling to Gana-Ropp, in the same local government area, when their vehicle was attacked on Saturday night. Ukasha Garaba, the Pyem youth leader in Gana-Ropp, helped carry them out. "We evacuated the corpses of five persons from Gana-Ropp," he said. "They were passengers who were travelling as labourers." A woman was killed at Baten Wereng in neighbouring Riyom the same night. Another person was killed at Ratyidi in Fan District. That makes nine. On this plateau the count has been wrong before, and it has never been wrong downward.
By a quarter past noon on Sunday the shooting had not stopped.
