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Death
Valley is Still, Like Kassa
Four Years After,
Kassa, Site Of Plane Crash That Killed Colonel Mohammed Abdullahi
Wase, Former Administrator Of Kano State Still Yearns For Development
That Would Take It Out Of Its Pristine State,
Reports TONY
IYARE
Shredded remains
of the engine of the aircraft which killed Colonel Mohammed Abdullahi
Wase, former administrator of Kano State, stayed glued to the site
of death as it was four years ago . Now taken over by a swarm of
bees buzzing away in this lonely valley overlooking two NITEL masts
and located some 300 metres to the Jos Airport, it is the only reminder
of the ill-fated crash which saw Wase and members of his delegation
scheduled for a condolence visit to their grave on June 20, 1996.
Just as the valley of death stood still, so is Kassa, a sleepy village
about 38 kilometres to Jos, the Plateau State capital where the
incident took place.
Thrusted from
obscurity to world prominence, the residents had expected the government
to use the crash incident as an opportunity to bring development
to this rustic village along Jos - Panshin road where the inhabitants
of about 10,000 still confront daily existence in the life of the
early man. Monday Choji Jugu, 33 who represented Kassa as a councillor
at the Barkin Ladi Local Government in 1996, said “We thought the
Federal Government will develop the crash site as a tourist centre
but our expectation has not been met”. This village has not received
much government attention in spite of its proximity to the state
capital, he said. An utterly disappointed Da Gyang Fom, 54 sums
up the lot of Kassa in the last four years: “Nothing has changed,
we’ve been totally neglected”. He may be right. The only addition
to the village since the crash is a government owned clinic manned
by a health superintendent and two nurses which commenced operation
two years ago, perhaps to make up for Kauna Health Clinic and Maternity
Home managed privately by Abdullahi Dan Asabe, a community health
officer which has long shifted base to Barkin Ladi. Fom who as Gwom
Gassa is the traditional head of the village, believes that other
communities like Heipang have greater development because they have
prominent people in government. “We have not had any development
because we have nobody in government”, he said.
The village
though has three primary schools has no secondary school, hospital,
boreholes and lacks other social amenities like a town hall, library
and recreational centre. Its feeder roads are not graded while the
chief’s abode which is on a highland in the centre of the village
is without electricity. In a village where farming is the main occupation,
supporting wards with N20 daily to commute to secondary schools
in Heipang or Barkin Ladi which are 3 kilometres away is too much
for the people to bear. Only the fairly well off parents send their
wards to school in Ropp, separated by 8 kilometres from Kassa. “Many
children do not go to school since their parents cannot afford it”,
explained Abdullahi Said, a beneficiary of the Poverty Alleviation
Programme of the Federal Government where he has been paid N7000
each for two months for planting trees in orchards. Said, 26 said
he had expected the government to build a secondary school, market,
borehole and embark on the construction of the road leading to the
National Youth Service Corps Farm project located there as a way
of immortalising the former Kano State governor.
Kassa whose
jungle is said to be a training site for cadets of the Nigerian
Defence Academy, Kaduna and senior officers on course at the Command
and Staff College, Jaji, has merely watched helplessly as other
communities reel with doses of good life. With the hosting of the
Jos Airport, now Mohammed Abdullahi Wase Airport, the Plateau State
Polytechnic, a railway junction and with social amenities like water,
hospital and town hall, its neighbour Heipang is gleaned with envy
by Kassa indigenes as a new London. The other neighbour, Barkin
Ladi is a fairly big town with infrastructures like a General Hospital,
housing units, local government secretariat, road network, secondary
schools and home to industries like the popular SWAM Water Company.
Fom believes that the travails of his community is further made
worse by the fact that Rufus Daniel Bature who hails from the area
is perceived as leader of opposition in the People’s Democratic
Party PDP controlled state house of assembly. Bature, a member of
the All People’s Party APP is the minority leader of the house.
“Our people
have been writing to government but there’s nobody to push our case”,
an almost rotund Fom said dejectedly as he sat in a meeting with
15 ward heads last week. In a twist of fate, Kin Nuhu Choji, the
first Kassa indigene to bag a Masters degree died six years ago.
This leaves Da Chomo Gwot, a controller of Customs based in Lagos
as the highest ranking indigene in the public service. Although
it closed shop 21 years ago, the people of Kassa still have fond
memories of Juladako High School, owned by renowned politician Paul
Unongo which operated in the village for six years. Toma Dachomo,
36, a ward head who spent two years at Juladako before proceeding
to Government Technical School, Bukuru to complete his secondary
education talked glowingly of the quality of teaching the students
got there.
“It is really
regrettable that the school was closed. The community has missed
a lot. Most of our children enrolled in that school before it was
shut down. Now they have to travel several distances to attend secondary
school”, he lamented. Why Unongo winded up operations of the school
whose teachers were mainly Tiv in 1979 was blamed on mismanagement.
But the political involvement of Unongo, also a Tiv as a member
of the ruling National Party of Nigeria NPN and Minister of Steel
Development in the aborted Second Republic, may have left him with
little time for the school which graduated two sets of form five.
For now the people have resolved to carry their cross. They have
begun through communal effort the construction of three classroom
blocks for newly established primary schools in Rahol and Rakung
at a cost of N300,000. Dachomo explained that these development
programmes are being carried out with little stress to the people
since funds for the projects come from sale and hiring of community
lands. Kassa makes N100,000 from hiring of land yearly.
The community
recently sold some choice lands for N450,000 and it’s negotiating
the sale of another from where it hopes to realise a little over
a million naira. The community appears to be making hay with its
land assets which is regarded as the largest among the Berom. According
to Solomon Bature, a politician who ran against Patrick Dokotri,
Speaker of the State House of Assembly in the Second Republic, “Our
forefathers fought with other Berom tribes and acquired a lot of
land and that’s why we have the largest land in Berom land”. The
Berom whose vote is decisive in any race to the governorship contest
in Plateau State trace their ancestry to the Buzus of Sokoto State.
Founded over 200 years ago by Da Rak, a nomad who migrated from
Ryon, a rocky area, in search of farmlands and grazing lands for
his cattle, Kassa has grown into a community comprising not only
Berom but also Hausa, Fulani, Angas, Mangu, Tarok, Gomai, Igbo and
Yoruba. An Igbo known simply as Okonkwo was said to be one of the
early settlers in Kassa. What the village lacks in terms of development
it gets in peaceful coexistence of its different ethnic groups.
Said Fom, “We all live peacefully as one family”. Though the Berom,
the largest ethnic group in Kassa are largely Christians, their
traditional cultural practices still subsist.
Their most popular
cultural festivals include the Buna festival held annually between
January and February and the Nzem Berom which takes place between
March and April. Solomon Bature explains that while Buna is organised
to mark a successful hunting season by hunters who had ‘big preys’,
Nzem Berom is marked in the expectation of the raining season and
a bumper harvest. Both festivals are marked with feasting, cultural
display and dances. Before now Kassa was virtually oblivious to
many who traverse the busy Jos - Panshin highway. The incident of
the morning of Thursday, June 20, 1996 changed all that. A ball
of fire and a thunderous explosion from a chattered aircraft piloted
by John Howell, a Briton had attracted the curiousity of the villagers.
The plane had lost control after crashing into one of the masts
erected by the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited NITEL to boost
reception in Jos area. Little did the residents know that trapped
in the aircraft now engulfed in a billowing smoke was Wase, the
former Kano State administrator and 12 others.
Only the later
arrival of rifle wielding soldiers and policemen that alerted the
villagers, some of whom had rummaged the crash site for choice items
including foreign currencies to a great tragedy. Despite alleged
protestations from pilots that they impair landing and take off,
the NITEL masts including the one that caused the crash are still
standing in the area interspersed by Savannah shrubs, maize plants
and guava trees. In fact construction was on last week at Kobokobo,
some distance within earshot of the crash site where another mast
is being erected. But Fom says removing the masts would be a disservice
to Kassa community. “We will not be happy if the NITEL masts are
taken away. The crash happened as an act of God and should not be
used to punish the people of Kassa”, he said. It was still an enigma
what Wase intended to do with the huge moneys said to have littered
the crash site by rescuers. But the government of General Sani Abacha
was said to have evacuated moneys kept in silos allegedly by Wase
in his hometown with the assistance of the late administrator’s
father who incidentally is the Emir of Wase several days after the
crash.
Like many communities
locked in crises of identity arising fro m years of Hausa-Fulani
lordship, the people of Kassa are presently engaged in a battle
of cultural redefinition. They say the correct name of their village
is Gassa and not Kassa as dictated by the Hausa-Fulani political
leadership which has held sway over many communities in the North
for a long time. It is the same way the Ankwe, a sub Jukun group
found mainly in Shendam and Yelwa area of Plateau State wants to
be known as Gomai. The Kaje, located in Southern Kaduna State would
take up the gauntlet if anything separates them from the name Bajju.
The Sayawa of Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area of Bauchi say
they are Zar, while the Bachama from Adamawa prefer to be called
Bwatiye.
“We have resolved
to proceed slowly on this change so as not to confuse people since
all records about this village bears the name Kassa”, Bature said.
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