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Please Tell a Friend about this article. Bloodshed in the Plateau Nostalgia is my feelings when I think of the city of Jos. I got acquainted with the city of Jos in the early 90s when by virtue of my job at the time; I was often privileged to fly into Jos, the capital city of Plateau state. The city of Jos is like no other city in Nigeria, it is one city with many contrast. I always looked forward to my visits to Jos which I embarked upon quite often and each time; I always went prepared with stuffed clothes, because of its cold weather and some cash, because I can never resist the lure of buying salad ingredients each time I am heading out of the city via the airport. Jos as I knew it then was home to many foreigners and tourists because of its temperate weather, almost a replica of the spring season in Europe. Jos in the early 90s was a place of peace and tranquillity; we use to call the city of Jos then the Europe of Africa. Jos was a beauty to behold in those early days, it was never known for religious or ethnic violence or fanaticism of any kind. It was peaceful, serene and tranquil. Her beautiful rock formation and luscious green vegetables with her friendly indigenes made it a tourist haven. Jos then was a foreign exchange earner for the government. Her resplendent weather and warm people with fairly good hotels made Jos a traveller’s delight. Each time I went to Jos, it was always a well deserved break and a complete departure from the usual hustle and bustle of Lagos. (Jos had very bright prospect of being a money spinner for both the state and the country at large. Unfortunately leadership failure and personal aggrandisement has made Jos another sorry Nigerian story). Those were the memories of Jos that I carried with me, these many years before now. The early hours of Monday 8th March 2010 brought an abrupt end to this once peaceful and tranquil state and turned it into an arena of bloodshed and theatre of massacre. The ambience of the city is now stained in blood, blood of the innocent and the defenceless. Some maniacs under the instruction of some lunatics went on rampage and by the time their madness disappeared countless of women, children and men have had their lives snuffed out of them. A once relatively peaceful community became the place of tears, agony and sorrow. Jos, is now a blighted community never to remain the same again; the organisers of this mayhem have accomplished their objective of turning this once pleasant society into a place of hatred, bitterness and hopelessness. The unprovoked massacre of innocent people is appalling to the extreme. Slaughtering women, children and men in the middle of the night without any prior warning or an opportunity for their victims to prepare or defend themselves is the height of spinelessness. The merciless marauders have just sent Jos into the dark ages. The organisers of the Jos mayhem were definitely highly placed individuals who have access to weaponry and logistics of personnel within the government to be able to unleash such well orchestrated and dastardly act without remorse or fear of being held accountable for such monstrosity. The socio-economic life of Jos has now been crippled and will remain crippled for a long time to come. The capacity of the state to earn any meaningful revenue from either tourism or micro economics will remain a mirage for a long time. The mindless fiends have turned Jos to a pariah state, to be avoided like a plague. Leadership failure has once again emerged as a precursor to this mindless bloodbath. The architect of this genocide would not have been so flagrant to embark on such madness if they knew there will be consequences for their actions. This egregious madness would not have taken place if our security operatives and logistical capabilities are functional. The Nigerian state is dysfunctional and decrepit. The massacre at dawn further plunges Nigeria’s image to that of a state in anarchy and jeopardy. Whatever shred that was left of Nigeria’s image in the League of Nations has now been completely removed. The Jos madness further justifies why we have been so vocifero The ease with which this massacre was executed and the enormous number of people conscripted shows how leadership failure has destroyed any rationality left of the Nigerian state. A country where 80% of the youths are unemployed and 80% percent of whatever wealth being generated by this country ends up in the hands of 1% of the population; means people are ready to erupt at the slightest provocation. Getting one Nigerian to kill another Nigerian at the slightest altercation is proof of the level of deprivation and degeneracy existing among Nigerians, as a result of systemic failure. The rapscallions in government have turned us against ourselves. They incite disunity amongst the people so that they can accentuate themselves; to plunder and purloin. The folly of using religion or tribe to perpetuate chaos and thereby maintain status-quo in governance is pathetic and ludicrous. This is one bloodbath too many; something must be done fast to stem this madness for ever. This nation is projected on the international stage almost on a daily basis for the wrong things and for the wrong reasons. Most oil producing nations of the world that produces oil in the quantity that Nigeria does and for the length of time Nigeria has, live in relative comfort; in Nigeria the opposite is the case. Majority of Nigerians are in abject poverty. How can any reasonable human being reconcile this paradox? A country of so much wealth and yet the people live in palpable squalor. In Nigeria the human life is worth nothing, to some extent we have all lost our sensibilities to the gruesomeness of wasted lives that when things like this occur; we are either apathetic or simply tired of emotional dissipation over what we see everyday or will soon see in the next few days. Our hearts have become calloused and seared to the point of numbness. The average Nigerian has no sympathy le The typical Nigerian is gradually becoming endangered specie, he is confronted on every side with various life threatening situations. If he does not get caught by robbers, kidnappers might get him or ritual killers attempt him for sacrifice or police stray bullet hits, or police brutality or he gets rammed by careless drivers who see humans as logs or the bank chief squanders his life savings and reduce him to a life of death by instalment. Or worse still he losses his job and takes to advance fee fraud until he gets caught and lynched by irate and restive mob or ends up in jail where he becomes some police man’s meal ticket via regular income from the jailor’s visitors. Life for a typical Nigerian is that of constant struggle, hoping against hope for a glimpse of light from his traumatised life. The cheapest commodity in Nigeria is a human life; it is snuffed at will and for the flimsiest provocation. We mourn those whose lives were gruesomely cut short by this religious maniacs and demented miscreants that do not deserve to be called humans. In some cases entire families were wiped out for no justifiable reason other than they profess a different faith from their assailants. This heinous crime must not go unpunished. The perpetrators and organisers of this cataclysm must be made to face the music. The government of Nigeria should for once rise up to the occasion and prove all of us wrong by bringing this jandukus (hoodlums) to book. It is obvious that the highly placed mafias that initiated this whole process of bloodbath at dawn will want to sweep this whole episode under the carpet and continue life as normal; waiting for another auspicious time to shed more blood and oversee more destruction and mayhem. The Nigerian space is sailing ferociously into uncharted waters and as the storms begin to build we can only pray that salvation will come from above and rescue us from this inevitable shipwreck. Shalom.
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