Its been eight years since the gruesome attack on Dogo Nahawa and massacre of 490 villagers mostly Women and Children.
It was January 22, 2010. The village of Dogon Nahawa in Plateau State was invaded in the dead of the night, some uknown gunmen shot villagers sporadically while others remained in the bushes for villagers who attempted to escape to be macheted and cut down
Here are some analyses through this review which was published a year ago by Dave
Rotshak Lar JP after his visit to the memorable mass burial site of the murdered persons.
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Mass grave where 490 people, mostly womenb and children were buried 8 years ago at Dogon Hanawa, Plateau State. |
READ BELOW… Reports by Dave
Rotshak Lar JP
I don’t know what necessitated it again, but a few days ago,
precisely on 22nd January, 2017, I paid another visit to Dogon Nahawa.
To visit, and write, in that place of horror, in that place where
unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, was almost
impossible – and it was particularly difficult and troubling for a
Christian, for me a Pastor and a Plateau man. In a place like that,
words failed; in the end, there was only a dread silence – a silence
which was itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain
silent? How could you tolerate all this? In silence, then, I bowed my
knees on the soil that sucked the blood of the over 500 people who
suffered and were put to death here; yet my silence and tears became in
turn a plea for forgiveness to those monsters who perpetrated this evil,
a plea to the living God never to let this happen again.Almost seven years ago, on March 7, 2010, killers invaded this sleepy
village and brought death with them. I went to Dogon Nahawa as a
pilgrim. I have not been there since the day we mass-buried our Kith and
kins who fell by the guns and machetes of those merchants of death. I
walked around the town, I saw women and children huddled together and I
wondered at where they were on that day and how they escaped while their
friends and relatives were hacked down. It was impossible for me not to
cry. And I did cry! Again!I alighted from my car at this dreadful place with thoughts troubling
my heart, appalled by its evil, yet grateful for the fact that above
its dark clouds the peace of God had come down on the inhabitants of the
place. This was the same reason why I went there that day: to implore
the grace of reconciliation – first of all from God, who alone can open
and purify our hearts, from the men and women who suffered losses here
and finally the grace of reconciliation for all those who, at this hour
of our history, are suffering from the bereavements that befell them,
especially our Southern Kaduna family.How many questions arise in this place, Dogon Nahawa? Constantly the
question comes up: Where was God that day? Why was He silent? How could
He permit this endless slaughter, this seeming triumph of evil? As I
stood on the big concrete mass grave I wept and felt so empty and
shallow. I knew that man is nothing but dust.I read the epitaph on the tombstone of the mass grave that housed over 500 souls
“They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true,
how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell
on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a
little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their
brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves
had been.” (Revelations 6:10-11)And I knew that these people who lay in the grave under my feet are
at rest from their labours. I knew they were in a far more better and
grander place. I also knew that they were the victors and their killers,
the victims.We cannot peer into God’s mysterious plan – we see only piecemeal,
and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history.
Then we would not be defending man, but only contributing to His
downfall. No – when all is said and done, we must continue to cry out
humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind,
your creature! And our cry to God must also be a cry that pierces our
very heart, a cry that awakens within us God’s hidden presence – so that
His power, the power He has planted in our hearts, will not be buried
or choked within us by the mire of selfishness, pusillanimity,
indifference or opportunism and the current killers doing the biddings
of their masters in Southern Kaduna and various other places.
Dave Rotshak Lar at the mass grave Let us cry out to God, with all our hearts, at the present hour, when
new misfortunes befall us, when all the forces of darkness seem to
issue anew from human hearts: whether it is the abuse of God’s name as a
means of justifying senseless violence against innocent persons, or the
cynicism which refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in Him.
Let us cry out to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and
help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates
more violence – a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately
the loser.Dogon Nahawa is a place of memory, it is the place of the Shoah. The
past is never simply the past. It always has something to say to us; it
tells us the paths to take and the paths not to take. As I walked by the
grave of those killed, I got a glimpse of the cynicism of a human
beings who treated men and women as material objects, and failed to see
them as persons embodying the image of God. The graves are pointed
reminders. The killers wanted to crush the entire Plateau people, to
cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words
of the Psalm: “We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the
slaughter” were fulfilled in a terrifying way.Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted
to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down
principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are
eternally valid.At Dogon Nahawa, Plateau State walked through a “valley of darkness.”
And so, here in this place, I ended my pilgrimage with a prayer of
trust – with one of the Psalms of Israel which is also a prayer of
Christians: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie
down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my
soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are
with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me … I shall dwell in
the house of the Lord my whole life long” (Ps 23:1-4, 6).
