Twenty-Five Years After the Jos Crisis: Remembering what we lost — and what Plateau is becoming again

Twenty-five years ago today, on Friday, September 7, 2001, Jos changed forever. For Nigerians who know Plateau State primarily through the recurring violence of the past two and a half decades, it can be difficult to remember just how different Jos felt before that September afternoon. Jos was not merely peaceful. It was on the ascendancy. Abuja's rapid development had inevitably taken away some of Jos's historic role as the leading administrative and commercial centre of Nigeria's North Central region. But Abuja's rise was also creating new opportunities for Plateau. Only about two and a half hours away on a relatively good highway, Jos became a preferred home away from home for people working in the new federal capital creating a domestic tourism boom. Government officials and businesspeople came up for weekends. Organisations held conferences and retreats there. Families sent their children to Plateau's excellent boarding schools and tertiary institutions. Tourists came for the temperate weather, remarkable landscape and a sense of escape that was difficult to find anywhere else in Nigeria. Agriculture was becoming increasingly promising. Plateau's altitude and climate allowed farmers to grow high-value crops that were difficult or impossible to produce commercially elsewhere in Nigeria, with the rapidly expanding Abuja market virtually next door. Mining — the industry upon which modern Jos had originally been built — had declined significantly from its glory days, with much of what remained becoming artisanal and subscale. But other sectors were emerging. Technology was one of them. Through leadership at the University of Jos and companies such as AfriOne, which I co-founded, Jos developed one of the strongest early internet ecosystems in northern Nigeria. It was highly literate, educated and unusually cosmopolitan. And quietly, something extraordinary was happening culturally. The music scene that would help transform Nigerian popular culture over the following decade was taking shape in Jos. The city became associated with an extraordinary collection of talent and enterprises — Chocolate City, M.I Abaga, Jesse Jagz, Ice Prince, P-Square, 2Baba, Asa, Ruby Gyang and others. Ironically, many eventually had to leave Jos to achieve national or international success. But Jos helped form them. It was a unique place in the middle of Nigeria: beautiful, temperate, cosmopolitan and peaceful. Then came September 7. The afternoon everything changed The violence erupted shortly after Friday prayers in downtown Jos. Different accounts have circulated over the years about the precise incident that triggered it. The story many of us heard at the time involved a confrontation near a mosque between a Christian woman and Muslim worshippers over her passage and dress. Whatever the immediate spark, it ignited tensions that had clearly been building beneath the surface. Within hours, Jos was descending into chaos. From our AfriOne office on Ahmadu Bello Way, then the heart of the city's commercial district, we could see smoke rising. We closed early and sent everyone home. People were running in every direction. Rumours travelled faster than facts. Neighbourhoods began dividing themselves. Christian versus Muslim. Indigene versus settler. Political competition, identity, land and increasingly the control of economic resources became intertwined with religion and ethnicity. Fault lines that had long existed suddenly reinforced one another. For me, this is not simply history. I lost friends and employees during the fighting. A small transportation business I shared with my friend James Kpanto was nearly destroyed. Vehicles and motorcycles were burned and some of our drivers were killed. AfriOne survived for several more years, but the promise we had seen in Plateau steadily diminished and eventually we closed. On September 9, while staying with the Gomwalk family, I came within minutes of potentially being killed along with others in the household. A sudden torrential rainfall dispersed an approaching mob. I have always regarded that rain as miraculous. Jos was never quite the same again. Older fault lines beneath a modern conflict The roots of Plateau's divisions go much deeper than September 2001. For centuries, communities across what we now call Nigeria's Middle Belt experienced slave raiding from more powerful states to their north. During and after the nineteenth-century Sokoto jihad, many Plateau communities successfully resisted incorporation into the emirate system, aided partly by Plateau's elevation, rocky terrain and fragmented geography. British colonial rule dramatically changed that political relationship. The British admired the hierarchical administrative structures they encountered in the northern emirates and made them central to their system of indirect rule. In parts of the Middle Belt, colonial authorities consequently extended structures of chiefly and emirate authority over communities that had previously resisted outside political domination. Christian missions subsequently found enormous receptivity across many Middle Belt communities. Over time, religion, ethnicity, political authority and perceptions of indigenous versus settler rights became layered upon one another. Yet history did not make conflict inevitable. The Jos of my childhood in the 1980s and early 1990s proved that. The Christian-Muslim violence we occasionally heard about elsewhere in northern Nigeria seemed distant. We visited mosques with Muslim friends. Muslim friends came to church with us. People lived, studied, worked and did business together. It was imperfect coexistence, certainly. But it was coexistence. September 2001 shattered it. The enormous cost of 25 years What followed was not one continuous war but something perhaps more corrosive: recurring cycles of violence, retaliation, displacement and fear. Different governors launched peace initiatives. Federal governments deployed military operations. Religious and traditional leaders intervened. Civil society organisations worked tirelessly at reconciliation. There were periods of genuine calm. Then another attack would occur. Another village. Another reprisal. Another burial. Over time, something terrible happened: violence became almost normalised. Pastors buried too many congregants. Imams buried too many worshippers. Families learned to ask which roads were safe and which communities could be crossed. The economic consequences were profound. Jos ceased being Nigeria's obvious home of peace and tourism. The weekend traffic from Abuja dwindled. Boarding schools that once attracted students nationally and internationally struggled to maintain their former appeal. Students became less enthusiastic about attending Plateau's many tertiary institutions. Agriculture suffered as insecurity and deteriorating transport links made markets harder to reach. Jos became psychologically and economically more isolated from Abuja despite remaining geographically close. Related News Mining continued, but poorly governed artisanal mining sometimes became another resource around which local competition could develop. Perhaps the greatest loss was confidence. Investment requires people to believe in tomorrow. For too long, Plateau's recurring crises made tomorrow uncertain. The crisis the world barely saw There is another painful irony about September 2001. My childhood friend Okwi was then a courageous young Reuters journalist. During the crisis, I worked with him as he tried to obtain some of the first video and still images of the violence and get them out to the international media. Communications infrastructure was primitive by today's standards, particularly since our AfriOne bandwidth operation that served Jos was hard to manage during that period. Getting footage from Jos onto global networks was itself an achievement. Eventually, on September 11, the material made it out. And then history intervened. Aircraft struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Like everyone else, we watched in disbelief. In Jos, where we were only beginning to emerge from days of extraordinary violence, some of us initially wondered whether the events might somehow be connected. Of course they were not. But from that moment, the world's attention was understandably elsewhere. A devastating conflict in central Nigeria disappeared almost completely from the international news agenda. Contemporary estimates of the death toll in Jos varied substantially, with some running into the hundreds and others above 1,000. Whatever the final number, behind every statistic was a person, a family and a future interrupted. Twenty-five years later, those people deserve to be remembered. Plateau has another chance This anniversary should not only be about what was lost. There are reasons today to believe that Plateau may once again be approaching an inflection point. Governor Caleb Mutfwang and his administration have placed considerable emphasis on restoring peace and rebuilding confidence in the state. The Federal Government is increasingly focused on security across the Middle Belt, while international attention — including from the United States — has grown around both security and economic development in the region. Courageous American political leaders like Congressman Bill Huizenga are engaging and supporting the peace efforts. High value agriculture is coming back in a major way, attracting young entrepreneurs into the sector focused on tea, coffee, acha/ fonio, strawberries, cut flowers, and more. Jos is reemerging as an attractive domestic tourism destination. And another opportunity is emerging that connects Plateau's future with its past: mining. The minerals beneath Plateau helped create modern Jos. Properly organised, regulated and industrialised, the mining sector can once again become an engine of prosperity — creating employment, attracting investment, generating government revenue and supporting infrastructure. But there is an important lesson from the past 25 years. Natural resources without inclusive institutions can intensify competition. Prosperity that communities believe belongs only to somebody else can deepen resentment. Plateau therefore needs more than mines. It needs a mining ecosystem and economy. That means moving from predominantly artisanal extraction toward exploration, mechanised mining, processing, supporting services, equipment, power, logistics, skills development and eventually downstream value addition. Most importantly, communities hosting those resources must be genuine economic participants. A wealthy Plateau must mean opportunity for everyone. Remember. Reflect. Rebuild. Those of us who knew Jos before September 7, 2001, know what is possible because we have already seen it. We remember a city where Nigerians from every region felt at home. A city where Christians and Muslims lived alongside one another. A city of schools, universities and ideas. A city of tourism and agriculture. A city experimenting with technology before much of northern Nigeria was online. A city whose young musicians were quietly preparing to reshape African popular culture. A city built on mining that had begun searching for its post-mining future. A beautiful city on a plateau in the centre of Nigeria that somehow felt connected to everywhere. We cannot recreate 2001, nor should nostalgia prevent us from recognising how much Nigeria and Plateau have changed. But we can recover what mattered most: peace, openness, opportunity and confidence in the future. Twenty-five years after that terrible Friday afternoon, we should remember those who died — Christian and Muslim, indigene and settler, and all those who became victims of labels that suddenly mattered more than their shared humanity. And then we should build. Build the roads again. Build the schools. Build tourism. Build agriculture. Build technology. Build modern mining. Build businesses. Build trust between communities. Above all, build a Plateau where the next generation never has to experience what ours did in September 2001, but instead experience the peaceful Jos we grew up in long before. The future of Jos can still be brighter than its past. May peace reign in Plateau State. Dr. Wiebe Boer is a strategy and investment executive who was born and raised in Nigeria. He co-founded AfriOne in Jos and was living and working in the city during the September 2001 crisis. Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date Open In Whatsapp