Lyrics:
Plateau winds… carry the cries…
Kaduna soil… drinks the blood again…
In the hills of Plateau, the night turned red,
Berom mothers screaming while the machetes fed.
Dogo Nahawa burning, flames lick the sky,
Whole villages vanish while the government lies.
Farmer and herder, indigene and stranger,
One God, two swords, feeding the anger.
Land cries for water, but it rains only pain,
Cycle of revenge rolling like the rain.[
Leave everything to God, they say as they die,
Bodies in the well, children left to fry.
No court, no justice, just silence and fire,
Impunity the fuel, and the flames climb higher!
Plateau! Kaduna! How many more must fall?
Blood calls for blood till we lose it all.
Cecilia Pam, thirty-two, hacked with her girls,
Husband beside her in a river of pearls.
Karos Nash, seventy, too old for their hate,
Obida the pastor, sealed with the same fate.
Chief Imam Liman fell at the mosque door,
Hajiya Tine pulled from the well, cold on the floor.
Lecturer in Zaria, dragged out by the mob,
One bullet for knowledge, one grave for the job.
Leave everything to God, they say as they die,
Mass graves are growing under Nigerian sky.
IDP tents full of widows and fear,
Boko Haram laughing, they know justice ain’t here.
Plateau! Kaduna! When will the killing cease?
When the dead get justice, or we rest in peace?
They burn the churches… they burn the mosques…
Then point at each other while the real devil boasts.
Reports on the table, names of the killers known,
But the powerful sleep while the children’s blood flows.
Human Rights Watch wrote it, Amnesty still cries,
Yet the same politicians wear their blood ties.
How many massacres before the world sees?
This ain’t farmer-herder… this is pure disease!
Leave everything to God… but God is waiting too,
For men to stand up and make the evil through.
Plateau! Kaduna! Break this deadly chain,
Or the ghosts will keep singing in the pouring rain.
Blood on the farmland… blood on the throne…
Nigeria, my country… when will you come home?
Dogo Nahawa… Kuru Karama…
The wind still remembers every single name…
Leave everything to God…
But God remembers too.
Background:
In January 2010, sectarian clashes erupted in Jos, Plateau State, quickly spreading to rural areas south of the city. Christian attackers massacred over 170 Muslims in Kuru Karama, including women and children who were hacked or bludgeoned to death, with bodies dumped in wells.
Berom farmers also targeted Fulani pastoralists in Fan district. In March, the Dogo Nahawa massacre saw attackers kill dozens of Berom Christians, many of them children.
Violence reignited in 2011 after national elections. Post-poll riots spread from northern Nigeria into southern Kaduna, where Christian mobs killed hundreds of Hausa-Fulani Muslims, including around 311 in Zonkwa. Christian villages in Plateau faced repeated attacks, with families shot or hacked to death.
Both sides accused each other of ethnic cleansing. Tensions stemmed from long-standing indigene-settler disputes: predominantly Christian Berom and other groups clashed with politically influential Hausa-Fulani Muslims over land, jobs, and political power, worsened by discriminatory local policies. Justice for victims remained elusive.
