I promised to run a weekly column every Sunday on facebook. This is the first edition.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change of ourselves”
- – Viktor E. Franklin
18 YEARS LATER: REMEMBERING JOS CRISIS OF SEPTEMBER 7th 2001
Yesterday marked the 18 years of the Jos Crisis. On that day neighbours and friends became foes. The quiet and serene city of Jos erupted in smokes and ashes as people bayed for the blood of those they could kill or maim. The land became so odious with the stench of human blood.
So much has changed since September 7th 2001, yet unfortunately certain truths have remained all too persistent. The threats we face today as Plateau people are tied to the same sword that pierced us so deeply 18 years ago. Now more than ever, we as Plateaunians must stop to reflect on such devastation, the essential lessons it taught, visceral anger it provoked, and the immeasurable patriotism it awakened.
For those who remember the horror of that day, the reality that we have marked the 18th year anniversary of September 7th seems remarkably surreal. It was a day that despite the time that has passed, still seems more like a nightmare than reality. So vivid are the details we can recall from such painful catastrophe and yet, how often so many go about their daily lives as if this world altering event never even occurred.
When I view the images of places in Jos before September 7th, I am immediately reminded of what an invaluably beautiful symbol Jos City was. Though aesthetically striking, J-Town was more than an architectural medallion. The city served as an unequivocal symbol of freedom, prosperity, Plateau ingenuity, and the most peaceful city in Nigeria.
But that which made the city so special, simultaneously made it the quintessential target of wicked people. It wasn’t until our peace came crashing down that we realized how much peace represented, and how lucky we were to have lived in a State that built it. Today, we have compartmentalized the city to settlements based on religions – Rikkos, Gangare, Bauchi Road, Ali Kazaure, Dadin Kowa, Massalachin Jumma’a, Angwan Rogo and Dilimi became predominantly Muslim communities while the rest of Jos became Christian settlements. I was born in Rayfield, grew up in Jenta Adamu and had my teenage years in Gangare. Today, I cannot enter Gangare without some fears that the Muslim friends I grew up could slash my throat. And they fear coming to my own part of town less “my people” burn them alive as well.
Thousands of innocent Plateau people woke up that Friday morning, kissed their family’s goodbye, and went off to work never to see their loved ones again. These were not soldiers engaging in armed conflict. These were ordinary civilians, whose lives were cut short by the same maniacal movement that continues to plague us.
Most People cannot wrap their minds around the rationale for someone to commit such a heinous atrocity as that which we witnessed eighteen years ago. Consequently, some foolishly attribute these actions to mental illness or most appalling, try to rationalize them as acts of self-defense. The reality is, these acts were carried out on innocent civilians by individuals who believed they would be rewarded in paradise with 72 virgins for their heroism.
It is this kind of belief that motivates an individual to slit a child’s neck with a butcher’s knives and decimate villages like Dogo Nahawa years later. Later we got people killing themselves in suicide missions along with thousands more in consequence. This ideology has also served as the motivation for the Jihadists to crucify children, strap bombs on infants, and burn unbelievers alive.
Our State rose so valiantly in the immediate aftermath of September 7th. We came together in ways not seen in our history. Total strangers running from violent areas suddenly found homes with people they have never met before. As chaplain of St. John’s College in 2001, we housed 18 people who ran away from their homes in Nassarawa Gwom, Ali Kazaure, Filin Ball etal. We gave shelter to a mother of twins who had just undergone Ceasarian Section (CS) five days before the terror. Churches opened their doors, united through both sorrow and anger.
Today, What has happened is that we value tolerance over toughness, feelings over facts, and politics over patriotism. We owe it to those who lost their lives or loved ones to this inherently evil belief to change course immediately. We the people must demand our politicians prioritize safety over sensitivity and if they should fail to do so, we must replace them with those who will.
For almost two decades since the sad events of September 7th 2001, Plateau State became a killing field where blood has been shed in the city as well as LGAs like Bassa, Barkin Ladi, Jos South, Bokkos and Riyom. I always know that someday I would tell my story of Jos. I have to tell it to my children and then to my grandchildren. I believe that they should know what it was like to be a Plateau man in the midst of the killings and to have survived this far. My children had heard snippets of the Plateau killings at the dinner table and at family gatherings, but it was never the whole story. It is, after all, not a story that lends itself to such occasional telling. But it is a story that must be told and passed on, particularly in a family that is, for all practical purposes, surviving by God’s grace . Only thus can the link between the past and the future be re-established for our family.
For example, I never really managed to tell my children, in the proper context, how my parents, wife, parents-in-law behaved during the 2001Jos mayhem and the strength of character they displayed at a time when other people under similar circumstances lost their moral compass. The story of their courage and integrity enriches the history of our family, and it must not be allowed to be buried with me. Because they were all living either in Dilimi or Gamgare in Jos at the time of the horror.
Someday I would recount the story of the killing fields of Plateau to a wider audience, not because I think that my part in it is all that noteworthy in the grand scheme of things, but because I have long believed that the Killings in Plateau cannot be fully understood unless we look at it through the eyes of those who lived through it. To speak of the tragedy in terms of numbers of those killed — 7,500 — which is the way it is usually done, is to unintentionally dehumanize the victims and to trivialize the profoundly human tragedy it was. The numbers transform the victims into a fungible mass of nameless, soulless bodies rather than treating them as the individual human beings they were. Each of us who has lived through the various killings on the Plateau has a personal story worth telling, if only because it puts a human face on the experience. Like all tragedies, the attacks (crisis, bomb blasts, killer herdmen etc) produced heroes and villains, ordinary human beings who never lost their humanity and those who, to save themselves or for a mere piece of wealth, helped send others to their early graves. It is also the story of some people from both sides of the divide who, in the midst of the carnage, did not lose their humanity.
I pray writers from Plateau would someday write of these events from their own perspective. The idea is so that we force the world to remember and never forget that we survived and are still surviving a genocide (an offensive word that politically correct people won’t want me to use!)
September 7th 2001 was a wake-up call from hell. To fall back asleep would result in devastation so catastrophic that the loss of life we witnessed eighteen years ago will pale in comparison. Although precious to us, life is meaningless to our enemies. Today, another new terror threatens us – they are variously called Killer herdsmen, or unknown gunmen.
As we look back on the heinous attacks in Jos that later went on for more than a decade and more; and now with villages and communities being decimated, let us not do so without heeding its tragic lessons.
Let us not forget who attacked us and why.
Let us not forget those who were taken.
Let us not forget that which we promised we wouldn’t.
Never forget and by God, never again.
MiddleBelt Reporters 