The sun was still low when the 50 elders of Magamin Diddi tied their turbans, picked up their walking sticks, and stepped out of the village. They were not going to farm. They were not going to market.
They were going to meet death — believing it was peace.
For months, Jammo had choked Magami/Faru ward like a python. The bandit kingpin of Muntsira Forest blocked every road to market. Farmers watched crops rot. Mothers counted grains. So when word came from Jammo’s camp: “I’m tired of blood. Let’s reconcile”, the elders believed it.
Against government orders. Against Governor Dauda Lawal’s policy. Against the warnings of their own chairman, Hon. Bello Dosara.
“We are against reconciliation with bandits,” Dosara would later tell Daily Trust voice heavy with regret. “But unknown to us, the people chose to go on with it.”
Every week Dosara sent security backup so the same villagers could reach the market and return alive. Now those villagers were walking 5 kilometers into Muntsira Forest — Jammo’s kingdom — to beg a man for mercy.
–The trap snapped shut–
Jammo waited. Not with kola nuts. Not with peace terms. With guns.
The 50-man delegation — grey beards, fathers, grandfathers — arrived at the meeting point expecting dialogue. Instead, they got handcuffs. Jammo, the ruler of Dajin Natsira — whose territory stretches from Bayan Ruwa to Kyetare — betrayed them on the spot.
“He said he was tired of banditry,” Councilor Bello Husseini recounted, still shaken. “He lied.”
The old men who came to negotiate peace became hostages.
–A history of blood, a cycle of one-for-one–
This was never going to be simple. Jammo’s war with Zamfara’s security outfit ‘Askarawa’ had already drawn blood. Askarawa killed two of Jammo’s lieutenants and took their rifles. During Ramadan, Jammo struck back — killing two Askarawa men and retrieving their weapons.
“You see we are one to one,” Husseini said. “They killed two of us, we killed two of them.”
The final trigger came after a military operation at Kandare village killed one of Jammo’s boys. That’s when he “requested reconciliation.” The elders answered the call. Jammo answered with chains.
–Ransom and release–
By nightfall, Jammo released 11 elders. “To brief the people,” he said. The message was brutal: 39 men remain in his custody. The price for their freedom? ₦24 million. Not for lives. For three rifles Askarawa took from him.
“These are elderly men,” Husseini said, anger cracking his voice. “He had no reason to hold them hostage. They speak one truth against a hundred lies.”
Dosara’s warning now sounds like prophecy: “They block access to the market and I support them with security every week. I wonder why they go to meet their rivals.”
–A forest that has never felt fire–
Both leaders made one demand, voices rising together: Burn Muntsira Forest.
“They have never been attacked by any security forces,” Dosara said. “One patrol, five kilometers from the village, will yield results.”
Husseini was more urgent: “When that forest is bombed, six LGAs — Talata Mafara, Bakura, Anka, Gummi, Bukkuyum, Maru, Bungudu — will be peaceful.”
Husseini himself has fled Magami/Faru. “I migrated due to insecurity despite being against reconciliation in whatever form.”
–The plea–
Now the 39 elders remain in Jammo’s camp. The message from Maradun LGA is clear and desperate, aimed at Governor Lawal and Minister of Defence Bello Matawalle:
Come. Attack Dajin Natsira. Before peace becomes another body count.
Because in Zamfara, sometimes the men who walk toward peace are the ones who never return.
[Rewritten story culled from Daily Trust]
