Leading Tarok voices in Wase Local Government Area of Plateau State have said that the crisis of last Wednesday, when the finding of the corpse of a Tarok man was followed by the killing of 10 Fulani men was not a tribal conflict, and that people of the two tribes have maintained a cordial relationship since the killings.

Barr Kwamkur Samuel Vondip, a Tarok from Kadarko District of Wase Emirate and Special Adviser to Governor Jonah Jang on Youth Development, who spoke to Daily Trust said, “I made efforts as someone in government to find out the truth. My findings indicate that a misunderstanding between groups of persons, some Fulani, some Tarok, and some other tribes, led to the killing of a member of a group and retaliation by members of the other group, who blocked the road.”

He said the crisis immediately took on a Tarok-Fulani ethnic gab because the killing of the first person, a Tarok, was quickly followed by the killing of 10 other people.

“We from those parts know that crimes such as stealing and killings have been going on there over time; the latest one only happened to have come in higher numbers,” Vondip stated, continuing, “in most of this armed banditry, people, sometimes Fulani and Tarok, will come together, carry out the robbery operation and share what they get; in which case the desperation to commit crime neither knows tribe nor religion, he said.”

Also speaking, the Ponzhi Kumbwang, Jessey Pyenkwam, said the killers of the Fulani men could not have acted for the Tarok as a people.

“The killers, Tarok or whoever, were a mischievous unknown bunch of people who could not be said to have been fighting for Tarok. The Tarok and Fulani of Wase are not fighting,” he said.

The Ponzhi Kumbwang blamed the media for ‘heating up the atmosphere’ and spoke of a need for restraint.

Assistant secretary of the Wase Local Government Area chapter of the Fulani group, the Miyetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Abdullahi Abubakar, was also of the view that the recent killings which occurred in remote communities east of Wase was not a Tarok agenda.

“Not all Tarok people supported what happened. Many Tarok people that I know were as bitter about the whole thing as we were,” he said