AHMED Musa, current captain of Nigeria’s national football team, the Super Eagles, has been consistent in his heartfelt call for an end to the recurring massacre of innocent people in Plateau State and other parts of Nigeria. We consider it as important to both chronicle and celebrate Musa’s exceptional responses to our country’s biggest problem today – the rampant killing of innocent people.
Although Musa hails from Kano, he lived most of his life in Jos, the Plateau State capital. He started his professional football career in Jos with the Jos University Teaching Hospital.
The ace Nigerian striker’s exemplary interventions in the midst of silence by other celebrities has been on for more than half a decade. In June 2018, while Musa and his team mates were ensconced in Russia for the World Cup, news broke that almost 100 people had been killed in Plateau State by herdsmen. Musa tweeted a photograph with the hashtag #StopTheKillingsInPlateau, and also led other Super Eagles players to similarly call for an end to the killings on the Plateau.
Three years later, in August 2021, after 22 persons coming from a religious event in Bauchi were killed and several others injured on Rukuba Road, Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State, Musa shared a picture of the travellers on his Instagram page with the following words: “The killings of the innocent travellers that came all the way from Bauchi State after Islamic New Year Zikr heading to their various destinations and got intercepted at Rukuba Road of Jos North is heinous and barbaric.
I’m calling on the government and relevant authorities to take measures in curtailing the future occurrence of such barbaric act. May their souls rest in peace and may peace reign in our dear state and Nigeria as a whole.”
Other Super Eagles stars like Kenneth Omeruo and William Troost-Ekong joined Musa by posting broken heart emojis as comments under his post. Sadly, Musa and his team mates’ plea to Nigeria’s Federal Government to stop the killing fell on deaf ears.
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Soon, the terrorists struck again while the Federal Government and its security agencies watched. In January, 2022, while camping in Abuja with his team mates for the 2022 AFCON, Musa took permission to leave the team’s camp in order to be with his relatives after losing family members in yet another deadly attack. He was to rejoin his teammates later in Cameroon ahead of Nigeria’s first game of that AFCON match against Egypt on January 11, 2022.
Musa spoke out again in December 2023, protesting the killings on Christmas Eve in three local government areas in Plateau State. Armed herdsmen had attacked 12 villages in the Barkin Ladi, Mangu, and Bokkos LGAs of the state. The attacking herdsmen did not only kill about 200 villagers, but they also left over 300 persons critically injured, displaced more than 10,000 others, and set their homes ablaze!
