Born Into Blood: The Silent Tragedy Of Plateau & Benue’s Children

A Childhood Stolen

TWELVE days before his life ended tragically, Muhammad Usman, a 17-year-old herder in Maraban Dare, Bassa Local Government Area, Plateau State, carried the weight of grief and fear on his slim shoulders. Born in 2008, Usman’s early life was scarred by recurring deadly attacks, compounded by the gruesome murder of his father in 2017. “He used to provide for the family,” Usman recalled. “He was killed while riding a motorcycle, and my mother would tell me we’d see him tomorrow whenever I asked about him.”

Taking on responsibilities far beyond his age, Usman began herding to support his mother and siblings. But misfortune followed. Gunmen killed all 30 cattle he had been tending, forcing him to abandon school and work for other pastoralists for a meager living. His dreams of education and a better life remained unfulfilled.

Twelve days after this interview, he was fatally caught in gunfire reportedly from soldiers pursuing hoodlums in Gero community, Jos South. Peace, it seemed, was an elusive luxury for him—and for many children born into the bloodshed of Plateau and Benue.

Decades of Bloodshed

The roots of this crisis stretch back decades. Plateau State was rocked by an ethno-religious crisis on 7 September 2001, seven years before Usman’s birth, leaving hundreds dead in Jos North. Violence soon spread to surrounding areas, destroying lives, homes, farms, and livelihoods. Tensions between largely Christian farmers and Muslim herders, once peaceful cohabitants in Bassa, Jos South, Riyom, Barkin Ladi, Bokkos, and Mangu, escalated into cycles of reprisal attacks.

Between 2001 and 2025, 11,749 lives were lost, and 420 communities attacked, according to a government fact-finding committee. Benue State mirrors this devastation, with massacres like Agatu in 2012 leaving over 80 mourners dead in a single day, and thousands more killed in successive attacks.

In Kwande LGA alone, over 5,700 lives have been lost since 2011, displacing 150,000 people and leaving 36,844 children in camps, according to the Benue NGOs Network (BENGONET) and state humanitarian authorities. These numbers reveal a human tragedy of epic proportions.

Broken Childhoods and Shattered Dreams

For survivors like 13-year-old Sekegh Ahen, the trauma of losing his father at age one has left deep emotional scars. Displaced from his home, he now lives in a settlement along Zaki Biam Tor Donga road, struggling to reconcile the memories of violence with the hope of education.

Similarly, Joshua Yakubu and Yahaya Muhammad saw their dreams of education and careers extinguished by attacks that left them injured, impoverished, or bereaved. Children like Gloria Jacob and Aisha Shehu were forced into work or early marriages, abandoning school entirely because their families could no longer provide for them in displacement camps.

The psychological impact of growing up amidst violence cannot be overstated. Experts warn that prolonged exposure to trauma fosters depression, emotional instability, and may produce future cycles of violence. Clinical psychologist Joy Enewa noted, “When children lose loved ones violently and are cut off from normal life, they learn to see bloodshed as normal. This perpetuates the cycle of violence.”

When Marriage Replaces School

For some families, survival dictated harsh choices. Dina Fater, a mother in Anyiin camp, recounted how her daughters were married off while still children because she could not pay for school fees or provide sustenance. The decision was not forced but born of hopelessness. Without sustainable interventions, many displaced girls face the same grim prospects.

Coping and Perseverance

Young adults like Tersoo Ata navigate adulthood amidst chaos, earning precarious daily wages in timber markets while still haunted by the deaths of family members and the destruction of their homes. Their dreams of education, artistry, or professional advancement remain suspended, trapped between grief and survival.

Even parents like Grace Emos and Gloria Jacob, giving birth in displacement camps, bear the psychological scars of lifelong violence, now raising the next generation in conditions of fear, insecurity, and poverty.

Seeking Solutions

Efforts such as the Benue State Anti-Open Grazing Law (2017), presidential panels, and military operations like Exercise Ayem A’kpatuma and Operation Whirl Stroke have produced limited results. Local security outfits, including the Benue State Civil Protection Guards, remain under-equipped and largely ineffective. Plateau has revitalized its Peace Building Agency, but progress is slow and sporadic.

Experts and elders call for decisive action: high-level peace summits, enforcement of laws, support for community vigilantes, rebuilding infrastructure, and sustained education and psychosocial programs for children. Without urgent intervention, generations risk inheriting a life of violence, deprivation, and lost potential.