President Bola Tinubu met with survivors of the Jos Palm Sunday massacre, consoling a grieving mother who held her deceased son in a viral video that captured Nigeria's ongoing security crisis in heartbreaking detail.
"I know the pain," Tinubu told the woman, Martha Ayuba, during his visit to Plateau State. "I see how—on the video—you held onto Ayuba, and the pain and agony in your heart, but it is only God who can give you joy and comfort."
The attack, which killed dozens of worshippers during Palm Sunday services, represents the latest explosion of violence in Nigeria's Middle Belt, where competition for land between predominantly Christian farmers and Muslim herders has fueled decades of bloodshed. The president's emotional visit underscores the government's struggle to protect citizens in a region where security forces remain stretched thin.
"No amount of money can pay all of you back," Tinubu acknowledged. "Yes, as a government, we will try our best to comfort you, to work with you. The best solution is for Jos to be Jos, the one that people like us grew up to know."
That nostalgic Jos—a cosmopolitan city where Nigeria's diverse ethnic and religious communities once lived in relative harmony—feels increasingly distant. The Middle Belt has become a killing zone where thousands die annually in clashes that mix ethnic grievance, religious tension, and competition over increasingly scarce resources driven by climate change and population pressure.
The Palm Sunday attack follows a grim pattern. Churches, mosques, markets, and villages across Plateau, Benue, and Kaduna states have become targets in a cycle of violence that Nigeria's security apparatus has failed to break. Local communities accuse both the military and police of arriving too late, doing too little, and sometimes showing bias along ethnic or religious lines.
