Plateau, Benue and Kaduna States are places in Nigeria where the earth no longer remembers what it means to be still. The soil has become an archive of grief layered with the blood and memories of lives cut short, families shattered, and communities erased in the dark of night. Again, the killings have returned, the country mourns, nothing feels new and our leaders will offer their usual refrain: sorrows, sorrows, prayers.
In recent days, the cycle of violence has tightened its grip. In Zike community, Bassa LGA, armed militia reportedly killed at least 54 people, many of them children and elderly residents who could neither flee nor fight. Homes were razed, bodies left in the open, and survivors plunged into a grief too deep for words. This was not an isolated incident. It was part of a pattern.
On Palm Sunday, a day meant to symbolise peace, sacrifice, and redemption, gunmen descended on Angwan Rukuba in Jos North. They came in the night, shooting indiscriminately. At least 30 people were killed, with many others injured and displaced.
On Easter Sunday, Kaduna and Benue were also not spared. This is the tragedy: the killings are no longer shocking; like clockwork, they are expected. Then the retaliations follow because those responsible for the carnage feed the fire of an existing inter ethnic/religious conflict and the cycle continues.
A Land Caught Between Memory and Violence
Plateau State has long been described as Nigeria’s “Home of Peace and Tourism.” But that identity now rings hollow. What persists instead is a fragile coexistence constantly ruptured by violence rooted in a complex web of land disputes, ethnic tensions, religious identity, and state failure.
Experts often point to the farmer-herder conflict as a central driver. As climate change pushes pastoralists southward in search of grazing land, competition with farming communities intensifies. But to reduce the violence to environmental stress alone is to miss the deeper crisis: the normalisation of impunity.
In Zike, as in countless communities before it, the victims were not collateral damage in a distant war. They were targeted in their homes, in their sleep, in their vulnerability. Reports from previous attacks in the same area indicate that victims often include children and elderly people, those least able to escape when violence comes. This is not conflict. It is slaughter!
There is something particularly jarring about violence that desecrates sacred time. Palm Sunday is meant to be a moment of reflection, a reminder of humility, sacrifice, and hope. But in Angwan Rukuba, it became a day of bloodshed. Residents recount how armed men stormed the community, some reportedly dressed in uniforms resembling those of security forces, before opening fire on defenceless civilians.
The aftermath tells its own story. Curfews imposed. Protests erupting. Examinations suspended at the University of Jos. Life interrupted, once again, by violence that arrives without warning and leaves without consequence. For the people of Plateau, mourning has become routine. Burial has become a weekly ritual. And fear has become a permanent resident.
The bloodshed did not end in Plateau. On Easter Sunday, attacks in Kaduna and Benue again shattered a sacred moment. In Benue, gunmen killed at least 17 people in Gwer West, destroying homes and displacing families. In Kachia LGA, Kaduna, worshippers were attacked during church services, with several killed and others abducted. These assaults targeting people at prayer and in their homes underscore a grim reality: in parts of Nigeria, no place is safe and no day is sacred, as violence continues to spread unchecked.
Beyond Narratives of “Clashes” and The Failure of Protection
Every massacre raises the same questions: Where were the security forces? Why do these attacks continue unabated? Who is held accountable? The answers are as troubling as the questions.
Despite repeated deployments of security personnel, the killings persist. Communities speak of delayed responses, of warnings ignored, of attackers who arrive and leave with chilling ease. In some cases, the use of military-style uniforms and vehicles by assailants has further complicated the already fragile relationship between citizens and the state. This is more than a security lapse. It is a systemic failure.
When a state cannot protect its citizens, when entire communities can be wiped out overnight without consequence, it erodes the very foundation of governance. People begin to retreat into self-help, into suspicion, into cycles of retaliation that only deepen the crisis. And so, the violence continues, not just because of those who perpetrate it, but because of the vacuum that allows it to thrive.
One of the most dangerous aspects of the crisis is the language used to describe it. Too often, these killings are framed as “clashes”, as though they are spontaneous eruptions of mutual aggression between equal parties. They are not. What happened over Easter was not a clash. These were coordinated attacks on vulnerable communities with the motive of annihilation. Language matters because it shapes response. When violence is mischaracterised, it is misunderstood. And when it is misunderstood, it is poorly addressed.
There is also a tendency to reduce the crisis to religious binaries: Muslim versus Christian, herder versus farmer. While identity plays a significant role, such simplifications obscure the deeper structural issues: governance failures, competition over resources, the proliferation of small arms, terrorism and the absence of justice. Until these root causes are confronted, the killings will not stop.
The Cost of Silence and Breaking the Cycle
Perhaps the most haunting aspect of the killings is not just the violence itself, but the silence that follows. There are statements of condemnation, promises of investigation and visits by government officials expressing sympathy. But beyond the immediate aftermath, the urgency fades.
The headlines move on. The country forgets, but the people do not forget. They remember the names, the faces and the nights when sleep was shattered by gunfire and the mornings that revealed the scale of loss. Silence, in this context, is not neutrality. It is complicity.
To speak of solutions in the face of such recurring tragedy can feel almost naive. But it is necessary. First, there must be accountability. Not just arrests, but prosecutions. Not just statements, but justice. Without consequences, violence becomes a viable option.
Second, there must be intelligence-led security. The pattern of attacks suggests planning and coordination. This is not random violence; it is organised. Preventing it requires more than reactive deployments; it requires proactive disruption. General Christopher Musa’s appointment in December 2025 had raised significant public expectations to decisively curb insecurity; unfortunately, that hope remains painfully unfulfilled.
Third, there must be a genuine effort to address the underlying drivers of conflict. Land use policies, climate adaptation strategies, religious and ethnic intolerance and community-based peacebuilding initiatives are not optional; they are essential.
Finally, there must be political will. Not the performative kind that surfaces after each tragedy, but the sustained commitment required to confront a crisis that has festered for too long.
This is not just a regional crisis; it is a national warning. It speaks to a Nigeria where insecurity is no longer an exception but a condition where communities live on the edge of fear.
If the killings continue unchecked, they will not remain confined to states. Violence, like fire, spreads. The question, then, is not whether Nigeria can afford to act. It is whether it can afford not to. It is also a test of Nigeria’s conscience, leadership and capacity for justice.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
