Violent Attacks Are Emptying Plateau’s Villages

Ajifa Solomon and Philemon Obeze

The morning was bone-chilling cold, the kind that seeps into the bones and refuses to leave, as if nature itself had chosen cruelty. Thirty-five-year-old Tani Jonah sat on a cement pavement in a modest, unplastered house, her eyes following a pigeon slicing through the clear blue sky.

“The cold gets worse at night,” she said quietly.

For eight months, the cramped guest quarters of Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Parish in Bokkos, Plateau State, in Nigeria’s North Central region, have been her home. She shares this space with nearly three hundred other displaced people. Thin walls offer little protection from the cold, and privacy is almost nonexistent. Yet it is safer than where she came from.

The memories of how she arrived here remain painfully fresh. She swatted a fly buzzing too close to her face and paused, gathering herself. Then she began to speak.

Tani had just returned from the river that morning when she noticed panic spreading through her village, Rafin Pa. People were hurriedly packing what little they could carry. Rumours of an impending attack had begun to circulate, spreading fear as fast as harmattan fire through dry grass.

“When we were alerted, most of the women ran,” she recalled. “The men decided to stay back and repel the attack.”

Many of the women remain displaced. With only the clothes on her back, a two-month pregnant Tani fled around 11 a.m. with her husband, joining others moving toward Bokkos town, which is about 10  kilometres away. While some moved in with relatives in other villages, Tani found refuge in the church compound that same day. Shortly after, she heard that the attackers had begun burning houses.

“There are no houses left in the village,” she said. “Nothing.”

The attack happened on Tuesday, May 25, 2025, and Tani has not gone back since.

When Tani arrived at the church, she met other displaced persons, but none from her village. She began squatting wherever there was space. At the time, she was two months pregnant. Her daughter was just two years old.

On December 22, 2025, she gave birth in the church compound. “There was no sufficient antenatal care in the camp, so I had to go to a clinic where I did a scan. Unlike my village, there was no support from elderly women,” she said.

Tani slept on the mat for the first few weeks of her arrival. “The church and the people around here gave us food in the morning and evening, but with the large population, it just wasn’t enough,” she recounted. 

Her rations went uneaten as the constant reliance on charity chipped at her self-worth. 

“I feel sad,” she said. “I don’t eat what I want like when I was in my house.”

Back home, Tani and her husband farmed wheat and yams, comfortably feeding their family. But at the IDP Camp, their ability to farm for livelihood is limited by land ownership. The livelihood pressure is worsened by Tani’s trauma and persistent longing for home, both of which keep her awake at night. And though her husband is with her in the camp, they are both dependent on charity.

But Tani cannot return to Rafin Pa. She claims armed herders are still hiding in nearby bushes, attacking anyone who tries to go back. “Some people tried to return but were killed,” Tani stated.

There is no one left to return to anyway—no family, no house, no village.

Her hope now rests with her children. “I want them to go to school,” she said. “They are trying here, but sometimes there is no teacher.”

Tani’s story is one of thousands unfolding across Plateau State, where years of violence, often framed as “farmer–herder clashes”, have devastated rural communities. While conflict has been largely oversimplified as competition over land and water amid climate change, the crisis has evolved into something far more complex, involving armed groups, ethnic tensions, weak security responses, religious tension and cycles of reprisal attacks, said Chris Kwaja, the Special Peace Envoy for the Plateau State government. 

“I think the point about conflict for now is a displaced narrative. Communities are not in conflict, but criminals are attacking communities. Why would you say they are attacking them? Some say it’s because of resource control. You will always find different reasons.

There are aspects of resource control. There are aspects of conflict between farmers and heathers. There are aspects of cattle rustling or killings of farmers and herders in the villages. There are aspects of context, identity, and all that. There are multiple contexts, but the point is simple. Regardless of the reason, no human being has the right to undertake such a sophisticated, lethal, and dastardly act of terror against people.”

Meanwhile, Amnesty International, a global NGO dedicated to defending human rights worldwide, warned that Nigerian authorities’ failure to tame the tide of this horrific violence is costing people’s lives and livelihoods.

“While President Bola Tinubu claims his government is implementing new security measures to address the rising insecurity in the country, the recent attacks in Plateau state show that whatever security measures implemented are not working,” the advocacy group stated.

Between December 2023 and February 2024, at least 1,336 people were killed, according to Amnesty International. “Of those killed, 533 were women, 263 were children, and 540 were men. Over 29,554 people were displaced, out of which 13,093 were children, while 16,461 were women,” the organisation said.

Locals who spoke to JoeyOffAir said men are often killed during attacks, leaving women and children displaced, widowed, and struggling to survive in overcrowded camps, churches, and school buildings. Many, like Tani, flee with nothing and remain displaced for months or even years, unable to return home due to persistent insecurity.

For those displaced, the damage is both psychological and physical

And no one knows this better than 47-year-old Dawell Luka Gideon, who witnessed the cruellest of the violence when armed men raided his home in Mbong, Barkin Ladi, on Christmas Eve in 2023, incinerating his pregnant wife and five children.

“I went out of the community to buy something, and before I could get back, they had rampaged the community. My pregnant wife and five children were burnt to ashes.”

The children, all girls, ranging in age from two to 13, were his pride. Dawell recall his moments with them with a heavy heart.

“Home was beautiful and powerful. Life was beautiful with them around. You could ask anyone around, and they would tell you that no one loved his wife and children as I did. My wife was my playmate. I would often tease her to teach me how to cook,” he narrated as his voice took on a sombre tone.

Dawell recalls the events as if they were yesterday.

“It was a coordinated attack. Everywhere was attacked at the same time. I didn’t see my wife and children that night, so I assumed they had fled like others. It wasn’t until Christmas morning that I discovered the truth.”

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On Christmas Eve 2023, families in Plateau State were preparing for celebrations when terrorists descended on their villages. What should have been a night of joy turned into one of unimaginable tragedy.

Around 10 p.m., terrorists with rifles and machetes began attacking villages across Bokkos and Barkin Ladi local government areas. They moved methodically from house to house, killing residents and setting homes ablaze. The violence continued for hours, stretching into Christmas morning.

At least 190 people lost their lives: mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents in the attack, according to Amnesty International. The organisation further noted that about 20 entire communities were attacked simultaneously in a coordinated assault, with hundreds of houses burned, leaving tens of thousands of people displaced.

As the attacks unfolded, terrified villagers made 36 distress calls to the military. But help was slow to arrive – the military cited the remote terrain and long distances as reasons for the delayed response. For many families, it was already too late.

Survivors say they will forever remember the Christmas of 2023 not as a celebration, but as the night their world fell apart. Reeling from the shock of seeing his family’s charred bodies, Dawell lost consciousness and was wheeled into the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH), where he spent most of 2024.

“I couldn’t recognise people’s faces. Even the people that I knew. I would say different things that made no sense,” he recounted. It took nearly a year before Dawell left JUTH and began piecing his life together. He attributed his strength to “the Body of Christ”. 

“I didn’t think I would be able to move on initially. But now, people say I’m moving as if nothing happened to me,” he added.

Dawell condemned the government’s noncommittal response to the plight of survivors.

“The government has not visited me for once. In fact, I was at the government house and spoke to the governor, but that was all. It’s like the government doesn’t care about us, to be candid. I was with the governor twice, and he even hugged me. He addressed us, but that was the end. I was told to write my immediate needs, and I wrote that I need a house and money to start life afresh,” he said.

Dawell recalls being told that “this thing, the government will not help you. It is the NGO’s that can come in”. He watched this play out. “Life has been very tough. Left, right and centre, no help. But I will not forget one NGO called Stefanos Foundation, they came to my house and got me a house to stay.” 

Across Plateau State, stories like Dawell’s and Tani’s intersect in displacement camps. 

Erasure of communities 

Erasure of communities 

In many of these communities, displacement does not end with flight. It is followed by erasure. Plateau residents allege that after attacks, some villages are quietly taken over by terrorists who rename them on Google Maps. In Mangu LGA, for example, a community long known as “Mangu Halle” is now listed as “Mongu Hausawa,” while “Mangu Town” appears as “Mongu Arna” — a term residents describe as a religious slur meaning “Mangu for pagans”. 

Recently, a fact-finding committee set up by the Plateau State government to investigate the aftermath of the violence disclosed that no fewer than 420 communities across 13 local government areas, particularly in Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, and Riyom, had been attacked between 2001 and 2025, with death tolls rising to over 11,000.

“They have been taken over, renamed, and people are living there conveniently on lands they pushed people away to occupy,” Caleb Mutfwang, the state governor, said.

Mutfwang decried the misnomering of the conflict as a mere farmer-herder clash.

“For those who think that the current situation is a farmer-herder issue, let me disabuse your mind from that perception; it is a product of organised crime by malicious elements who do not want peace to reign in the state,” he said in an interview in 2025.

As the cold night wind wraps itself around the thin walls of Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish quarters, clawing for a way in, Tani lies awake on her mat. Sleep does not come easily. Neither does the future. For now, there is no way home. 

This report was commissioned with support from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) under a journalism support initiative funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Nigeria. It is the first dispatch in a three-part series examining the realities of displaced communities in Plateau State.