After blood is shed, we shed tears in vain. But tears take a journey of their own, leaking through our pores and twisting down our faces with cheeky authority. This happened in Plateau State recently on a night where herdsmen came for cowardly plunder.

Parents cried, children cowered, whole villages mourned and wives watched widowhood fall upon them as their husbands expired in the sultry omen of their blood. Tragedy, especially of this sort, does not flash a signal. It relishes an impunity of arrival. It has not for a long while in Plateau, where the people were getting used to a strange berth called peace. Until the recent gruesome episodes, the residents regaled themselves to their own narratives of tranquility. But with their secret joy tortured, they thought in the words of the poet Walt Whitman, “something startled where I thought I was safest.”

Such a tragedy is better as an omen than as fait accompli. In either case, though, such a tragedy first humiliates and later paralyses. Marauders crush the cheekbones of towns, and families crumble. They are not human beings. They are beasts. At best, they are parodies of homo sapiens. Many of us grew up associating the word butcher with men whose biceps swing knives at cringing cows. They were the harbingers of pomo and shaki and bokoto: the choice parts of the bovine creature.

Butchery promised parties and burps from happy bellies. Today, it is a branch of the human family known as herdsmen who know nowhere for knife blades or gun nozzles but the human body. The word slaughter was never meant for human beings. Now they are. As a metaphor it has lost its innocence just like we humans. The herdsmen target humans who sound differently and say yes and amen to another god. To them, hell is other people, apologies to French writer Jean Paul Sartre.

The herdsmen are known there to be minorities in the place. They may not have numbers but they overwhelm through stealth onslaughts. They have no heritage, or rights or memorials in Plateau. But they want to build memories into memorials – the dark, blood-stained memories of boys, girls, mothers and fathers put to death, the remembrances of loved ones cut down in their homes.

The killers don’t live in Plateau. That was what riled Governor Simon Bako Lalong at a town hall meeting where he ordered the police to fish out the killers. But he knows their collaborators are locals. “How can they say that people killed and there is no arrest,” he asked incredulously. “Are those killing others spirits? I don’t think you can kill 15 human beings and claim you are spirits and there is no arrest. Police, you should take the community leaders and the Ardos with you so that they can tell you those behind the killings.”

It is the first ever time the Ardos will be so browbeaten in public. Ardos are the Fulani community leaders. The rage of the governor paid off, and some Ardos and other community leaders have been taken away for questioning. They have been taken to Abuja for grilling. The governor, who is also the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, also warned that kidnappers are lurking into the state to operate.

The governor’s charge exposed one of the great points about fighting terror of the bands of butchers? The first weapon we need is intelligence. It means the communities know who the killers are. Indigenes suspect the leaders of the Fulani in the state. They believe the killers are no strangers to the Ardos. If the Ardos know them, it means they had tips about the boys of plunder. They knew they were coming. They saw the shadow of the goons. They knew some locals would die. They did nothing. It means they were maniacal accomplices. It means they have blood in their conniving fingers. If the investigators determine this, it is a critical first step in stopping the murderous spasms.

We hope that Abuja will not fail Jos, and the security forces will not cow to considerations that undermine and unvarnished analysis of who the demons are. The tension between the settlers and indigenes led the governor to draw up a template for communal interactions and conflict resolutions. It has worked for years, with occasional infractions. The recent orgy reflected a breakdown. Hence the governor’s anger.

A few days back, governors from neighbouring states, including Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State and Atiku Bagudu of Jigawa State paid a visit to Governor Lalong to show solidarity. But it was more of a gesture of sympathy and cooperation. Representatives of the Nigerian Governors Forum and the Northern Governors Forum also were present.

The meeting can also be tied to two developments. First is the belief that the bands of murderers came from neighbouring states. Two, that the governor had said kidnappers were crossing into the state for mischief. It brings to mind what Governor Lalong himself said about community policing. But community policing can manifest in any dimension depending on its conceptualising.

We can have community policing to cover a neighbourhood of a few streets. It can oversee a state, or even a community of states. It was reported recently, for instance, that the northern governors were contemplating its version of Amotekun, which is also a sort of community policing. The militants are, by their own barbarism and bloodlust, helping to evangelise Amotekun.

As it stands in Plateau, so it should in the country at large. We cannot leave the enforcement of peace in the hands of a governor alone. It must be a shared responsibility. The issue of Plateau is baffling. Some of the disagreements arise from the rustling of cows and destruction of farms. These tensions should have been resolved by referring grievances to the councils set up for local peace and harmony. Some of them decided that bloodshed topples reconciliation. That is at the root of the mayhem. It is an instinct for human evisceration, which is hard to associate with even animals.

Animals kill for motives, some for food, some to protect territories because animals cannot build reconciliation committees. Lions piss to draw up their borders. Humans have the facility for reason and even for temper control. When humans plunder like the herdsmen have done, they do it for no other reason than that they can. Such acts are associated with Iago, one of Shakespeare’s enduring characters. He is a plunderer. The Shakespeare critic and poet Samuel Coleridge describes such acts as “motiveless malignity.” The militants kill not out of reason or clear human profit. They are creatures of base instinct. They are benighted, distorted souls.

But they are not spirits. They have blood, flesh and bones like all of us. The difference is that they want others not to occupy space but graves. Governor Lalong has other ideas. Ditto all those who belong to civilisation. If they would not let decent beings occupy space, then they have no place here.