APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 19 Beyond the Ethno-Religious Theory of the Jos Conflict 19 Efforts in 2004 by the civilian administration of Governor Joshua Dariye, a Berom Christian, to have the Jos North LGA administered by a duly elected chairman precipitated blood letting as the Hausa-Fulanis and the Beroms, Afizeres, and Anagutas fought over which of the two sides should control the LGA. The 2004 violence underscored a new dimension of the conflict.1 At that time, Plateau state had split into two power blocs—one led by Governor Dariye and the other headed by Ibrahim Mantu, a Muslim of Hausa-Fulani stock and the country’s deputy Senate president. Although, the factionalization between these two camps concerned political control of the entire state, the indigenes saw in Dariye a messiah of a sort, one of their own who could deliver control of the Jos North LGA to them. In their eyes, the Muslim leadership in the state and Abuja had attempted for years to use their position under the military regime in favour of the Hausa-Fulanis, who saw Mantu as their political saviour as far as the Jos North LGA was concerned. Four years later, during 28–29 November 2008, a fragile peace that had prevailed finally collapsed. In addition to large-scale losses of property, the police and State Security Services reported 200 and 643 deaths, respectively, in two days of violence.2 A nine-member ad hoc committee in the federal House of Representatives attributed the immediate cause of the violence to an attempt by the Plateau state government, led by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), to influence the ascendancy of two Christians from the Beroms and Anagutas as LGA chairman and vice chairman. The Muslim population and the (Christian) Afizeres, both affiliated with the PDP, disapproved of the party’s actions because they thought of the LGA as their ‘territory’.3 Slightly more than a year later, on 19 January 2010, another spate of violence erupted, in the Kuru Karama area of Plateau, some 30 kilometres south of Jos. Human Rights Watch (HRW) put the death toll at 150. HRW’s report that the dead were primarily Muslims pointed to the deepening religious dimension of the crisis.4 A reprisal attack by the Fulanis on Dogon-Nahawa village in the early hours of 9 March 2010 left between 100 and 500 Berom Christians dead.5 Despite acknowledgments in the public discourse and scholarship of the sociopolitical and economic components of the foregoing conflicts in Plateau state, the dominant perspective continues to perceive the crisis as essentially an ethno-religious 1. A 2002 study by the federal government–supported Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) in Abuja tracked a spate of earlier crises, in 2001, in Plateau state that were intra-indigenous in character. Of note are those between the Bokkos and Wambas (in neighbouring Nasarawa state over farmlands and waterfalls), between the Mangus and Bokkos, and between the Panyams and Changas. See Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, ‘Strategic conflict assessment of Nigeria: Consolidated and zonal reports’, 2d edn (Abuja, 2003), 66–71. 2. See ‘How Jos crisis erupted, by Reps committee’, Daily Trust, 24 March 2009, for a report on the events in late November 2008. 3. Ibid. 4. Kuru Karama’s population is predominantly Muslim Fulanis. For a summary of the Human Rights Watch report, see ‘Nigeria–Protect survivors, fully investigate massacre reports–At least 150 killed by mobs in Kuru Karama’, allAfrica.com, 22 January 2010, http://allafrica.com/stories/201001240005.html; see also Human Rights Watch, ‘Arbitrary killings by security forces: Submission to the investigative bodies on the November 28–29, 2008 violence in Jos, Plateau state, Nigeria’, 20 July 2009, www.hrw.org/en/node/84005 /section/1. See especially section 4. 5. The figures are disputed. The police cite 109 deaths, but some media reported a figure of 500. See for instance, Daily Independent, 11 March 2010, 1; also, see note 54 below. The figures have not been reconciled.