Nigerian troops arrested 24-year-old hunter Emmanuel Daniel on August 22 after residents of the DTV area in Bassa Local Government Area, Plateau State, reported hearing gunshots. Upon arriving at the scene, soldiers found Daniel in possession of a Dane gun, a homemade, single-shot muzzle-loader commonly used for hunting.
He told them he had fired the weapon while hunting. Photos from the scene show Daniel holding a dead pigeon alongside the confiscated muzzle-loader, consistent with his account. He and the weapon remain in military custody.
Two days after a Fulani attack killed at least 24 residents of Bin-Per, a Christian village in Mangu LGA, soldiers moved against a community leader in nearby Chakfem, according to Mathias Sokden, director of the Cultural Mogavul Development Association.
Fulani gunmen attacked the Bin-Per community in Kombun District between 11:30 p.m. on August 17 and the early hours of August 18, 2026. They opened fire on local vigilantes before splitting into groups and moving from house to house. The attackers also burned homes and farmland.
During a plenary session of the Plateau House of Assembly, the member representing Mangu South, Dr. Matthew Sylvester Kwarpo, said more than 25 people were killed in Bin-Per and one more in nearby Jwak and Murish. He said 38 houses were burned and grain stores and farmland were destroyed.
Following the victims’ mass burial, dozens of women staged a protest demanding government protection. The rights group PIDAN said in a statement that “condolences are no substitute for security,” calling the recurring pattern of attacks “intolerable.”
Among the dead were the wife and three sons of Shadrach Ayuba, a village watchman who was on vigilante duty when the attack began. Ayuba escaped with a gunshot wound to the leg after swimming across a river to reach a neighboring village, according to an interview published by The Gateway Pundit days after the attack.
A separate account from the same report provides further details about the scale of the assault, citing allegations from a community leader that the Bin-Per attackers numbered more than 500. Similar attacks involving watchmen armed only with homemade muskets facing much larger groups equipped with AK-47s have occurred elsewhere in Plateau State, as previously documented following an August 5 attack in Riyom LGA.
Sokden reported that troops arrived at the Chakfem community leader’s home around midnight on August 20, acting on intelligence alleging that he was involved in cattle rustling. The troops then searched the surrounding community. According to Sokden, no evidence of rustling was found, but soldiers confiscated weapons the leader had held in trust for Chakfem’s defense.
By his count, the weapons included roughly seven locally made firearms, one fabricated weapon, and several AK-47s. He also stated that a drone was used to survey the leader’s house before the raid.
The Nigerian Army provided a different account, reported separately by TheGuildNG. It identified the suspect as Pantong Stanley of Mwar Community in Chakfem Kingdom and said a manhunt for him remained underway. According to the Army, troops recovered five firearms and 15 rounds of ammunition during a raid prompted by intelligence linking Stanley and other youths to cattle rustling and a planned attack on residents. The Army described the operation as part of a broader effort to curb illegal firearms in the area.
The raid left Chakfem “in total confusion” and vulnerable because the confiscated weapons were the community’s primary means of defense against Fulani attacks, according to Sokden. He suspects that someone within the community alerted security forces to the weapons cache. In his view, “enemies of communities,” insiders who knew the town had armed itself, passed along the information, leaving residents exposed.
The Irigwe Youth Movement is a Christian advocacy group representing farming communities in Bassa LGA, Plateau State. For years, it has petitioned successive Plateau governors to empower village vigilantes and increase troop deployments rather than calling for the communities themselves to be armed.
In response to the ongoing disarmament operations in Christian communities, the group called on the Army to focus its efforts on Fulani herdsmen carrying AK-47s rather than villagers defending themselves with locally made weapons. It said it hoped to see Operation ENDURING PEACE “arresting the Fulanis killing our people with AK-47s” across Bassa, Riyom, Barkin Ladi, Jos South, Mangu, Bokkos, and other parts of Plateau State.
Operation ENDURING PEACE is the Nigerian military’s joint task force for the state. Launched in September 2025 as a rebranding of the former Operation Safe Haven, it is tasked with countering the wave of attacks on farming communities. These attacks are officially described as “banditry” and “communal violence,” although they have overwhelmingly involved Fulani militia raids on Christian villages.
Both incidents fit a broader pattern documented across Plateau, Benue, and Nasarawa states. Security operations targeting locally made firearms, including Dane guns, fabricated pistols, and single-barrel rifles, rarely distinguish between criminal use and community self-defense. Meanwhile, AK-47s recovered from attackers in the same region are typically recorded as trafficked weapons connected to banditry rather than as the primary tools of anti-Christian violence.
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