By Ali Abare from Lafia
There is a place in the North Central Nigeria that was once the pride of every Nigerian. A place where the cool breeze of the hills carried laughter, where markets buzzed with the sounds of different tongues trading, eating and living together.
A place where the church bell and the mosque call to prayer were both sounds of peace, not signals for war. That place is Plateau State. That place is our Jos.
Today, that same place is soaked in blood. Mothers are burying children. Children are growing up without fathers. Farmers are afraid to go to their own farms. Traders are counting losses instead of profits.
And the rest of Nigeria watches, helpless, as one of her most beautiful states continues to burn.
We must ask ourselves, honestly and without pretending, what exactly are we fighting for?
What is the prize at the end of all this bloodshed? Land that is now stained with the blood of the very people who should be farming it? A community that has been emptied of the neighbours who once made it a community?
Religion that has been stripped of every teaching of mercy and compassion it ever carried? No sane answer justifies what is happening on the Plateau.
The truth that many refuse to say out loud is this. No single group is winning this crisis. Everyone is losing.
The farmer who wakes up to find his homestead burnt down is losing. The herdsman whose cattle are killed and whose family is displaced is losing. The trader in the market who cannot open her shop is losing. The student who cannot go to school because the road is not safe is losing. The man who turns on his phone every morning dreading another news of massacre is losing.
We are all losing. And the land itself, the beautiful Plateau land, is losing the most.
To the political leaders, both those in government today and those who aspire to govern tomorrow, history will not be kind to those who watched this crisis and turned it into a tool for their own political survival.
The people of Plateau State deserve more than a government that reacts only when the cameras are rolling. They deserve a leadership that is working, quietly and seriously, every single day, to address the root causes of this crisis.
Not just the symptoms. Not just the bodies on the ground. The roots. Land use, resource sharing, historical grievances, access to justice, accountability for past killings. These are the conversations that must happen, even when they are uncomfortable.
To the traditional rulers, the chiefs and district heads and village heads who carry the weight of their communities on their shoulders, your voice matters more than any government press release.
When an elder speaks with authority and love, people listen. The time to speak is now. Not after the next attack. Now. Go to your people. Sit with them. Remind them that no religion on this earth, not Islam, not Christianity, teaches that the blood of an innocent neighbour is acceptable. Remind them that the dead cannot farm, cannot trade, cannot pray, cannot build. Remind them that peace is not weakness. Peace is the bravest and most difficult thing a man can choose.
To the religious leaders, the pastors and imams who stand before their congregations every week, you have a power that no politician has.
You speak to the hearts of the people. Use that power now. Do not wait for the government to tell you to preach peace. Do not wait for the crisis to reach your own street before you speak. Stand up in your pulpits and your mimbars and say clearly that God did not send any of us to kill our neighbours. Say it again and again until it sinks into the bones of every young man who is being recruited into a cycle of revenge that will only destroy him.
To the young men on both sides who are carrying weapons and nursing anger, someone is using you. Someone who will not be on that road when the soldiers come. Someone who will not be in that village when the reprisal attack happens. Someone who is benefiting from your rage while you carry all the risk and all the consequences. Ask yourself who benefits when the Plateau burns. It is not you. It has never been you.
And to every Nigerian watching from outside Plateau State, this is not someone else’s problem.
The North Central is the food basket of this nation. The crisis on the Plateau is a crisis for every table in Nigeria. We cannot afford to look away and wait for it to resolve itself. It will not. It needs attention, resources, political will and the collective moral pressure of every Nigerian who still believes this country can be better.
Plateau State is not a war zone by nature. It is a war zone by failure. Failure of leadership, failure of justice, failure of dialogue, and failure of the will to choose a different path. But failures can be corrected. It is not too late.
Our Jos can breathe again. Our Plateau can heal. But only if we decide, together and without further delay, that the killing stops here.
