BLOODBATH IN JOS

Your natural landscapes are painted red again
Your cool and fresh weather heated by hatred
Your once open hands of brotherhood amputated
Your loving heart for love mutilated
Only hatred is sprouting from your once green soil
You have massacred women and children
As your leaders shamelessly watch with an approval nod
Their hands are full of blood of the innocents
Oh Jos! Oh Jos!! What befell you?

I heard that you hate settlers
But if I may ask the older settlers of the Plateau
Where were they when the settlers came?
Where were they when they settled?
Where were they when the settled toiled robustly at the mines?
Where were they when they built your so-called capital?
Were indigenes on the hills busy drinking burkutu?

I heard that you are becoming puritanical
I heard that what you want is a purely Christian State
Where no other creed or belief shall flourish
Could you be self sufficient in a nation of multiple faiths?
Can you afford to be isolated by other Nigerians who share other faiths?

The nation is sensing the shadow of puritanical paganism looming
The professed faith is loosing its clasp of your hearts
The love preached by Christ is gradually being battered by hatred

Oh Jos! You cannot go on like this
Those heartless butchers must be brought to book
And the spirit of those murdered shall keep them awake for eternity
Never again! The settlers have spoken!

December 13, 2008
© Yusuf Adamu 2008

THE CARNAGE ON THE PLATEAU

The Devil walked up and down,
Thinking deeply, reflecting,
On where best to land,
And so he studied the list,
Of possible places and decided at last
In his pestiferous way, to land on the Plateau.

He looked around, along with a band of his fallen angels,
At the cheerful faces of the people,
Walking around with their cherished ambitions
And decided to select among them,
Who best to anoint with his deadly fingers,
He dicided at last, to anoint the people living on the Plateau.

He orchestrated the chaos, and perpetrated it
At its cresendo, men, women and children,
Where all running up and down,
In a frenzied situation, and peace was then
A strange word, in the ears and minds
Of the people living on the Plateau.

People kept scrambling, hiding,
Prisoners they turned themselves, in their houses,
Eyes dazed with horror, some crouched in bushes, and in ditches,
Neck outstretched, they looked and corked
Their ears, only to scrambled at the cry of ''they are coming!''
Pouncing on the people living on the plateau.

And when all was over, after six days from,
That fateful Friday that has no weekend,
The seventh of September it was, a sunny day,
"Perfect" said the devil, in his scurrilous way "Well, almost perfect,"
He observed, as he studied the anguished faces,
And counted the heap up bones of the people living on Plateau.

As far as he is concerned,
It was an odyssey. But it was in fact
A carnage. For he did turned his back,
Along with his fallen angels, and retired to the hills,
Nay, to the dormant volcanoes, happy with himself,
With this wrapped up anguish, death and despair,
He brought as his 'Godly Seasons' Gift to the people living on the Plateau.

Men walked around, and women too,
Picking the broken pieces of their
Once happy, prosperous and peaceful
Heritage. With scowling faces they now
Looked at the once cheerful faces of thier neigbors and friends
The people living on the Plateau.
"Happy survival'' is now the greetings
That replaced the "hello" and ''good morning''
That was only yesterday, the salutations
That graced the lips of the joyous people,
The fun loving, friendly and ever busy people,
The good people living on the Plateau.

It was indeed a sad September
And October, November and December
But who will bring back that lost Amethyst
Called Peace that was snatched away so suddenly
From the people living on the Plateau?

© MARYAM ALI ALI, 2009
(I wrote this poem after the September 2001 Jos massacre, and it was published in the JOSANA anthology Echoes of The Rock. We thought we have seen the end of it, but it appears that the devil was still lurking around)