A large, well-armed militia force, primarily from the predominantly Christian Tarok ethnic group, surrounded and attacked the town of Yelwa in Plateau State. The attackers, some in uniforms and others stripped to the waist, were armed with sophisticated weapons, including machine guns, as well as machetes . They went house-to-house, killing residents, the vast majority of whom were Muslims from the Fulani and other groups . The attackers also abducted women and children; some of the women were reportedly raped . The town suffered massive destruction, with homes, a mosque, and other buildings burned and razed
2 May 2004 · Yelwa and surrounding villages, Shendam, Plateau
Deaths
700
Injured
60
Total casualties
760
Perpetrators
Communal/Ethnic Militias
Response
The Nigerian police and military were notably absent during the two-day attack. Reinforcements were only deployed after hundreds of people had already been killed. A curfew was eventually imposed, and security forces were ordered to shoot trouble-makers on sight
Displacement
10,000
Socioeconomic drivers
A critical driver was the failure of the government and security forces to intervene in time or address the underlying grievances over many years, allowing the conflict to spiral out of control
Trajectory
Yelwa changed the nature of the Plateau crisis from Urban Riots (like Jos 2001) to Rural Cleansing. It proved that rural militias were becoming more organized, better armed, and capable of high-fatality coordinated maneuvers. This event also triggered the Kano Riots of May 2004, where Muslims in Kano attacked Christians in retaliation for the events in Yelwa, showing the inter-regional contagion of sectarian violence.
Cycle notes
The 2 May 2004 Yelwa massacre was the most lethal phase of a cycle of reprisal killings that had begun with the 24 February 2004 Muslim attack on Christians in Yelwa. This pattern—a provocation, a massive counter‑attack, and a subsequent wave of revenge violence—echoed the 2001 Jos riots and foreshadowed the 2008, 2010, and 2014 Plateau massacres. The government’s failure to prosecute perpetrators, documented by Human Rights Watch in 2005, meant that the cycle of impunity continued, enabling future violence. The massacre also demonstrated how localised ethnic land disputes had become fully weaponised along religious lines, making conflict resolution far more difficult.
Pattern
Ethno-Religious Violence
Related — Communal Violence
In one of the most brutal episodes of ethno-religious violence in Nigeria‘s Middle Belt, hundreds of armed men launched a coordinated pre‑dawn raid on the village of Dogon Nahawa and the neighbouring hamlets of Ratsat and Jeji (also reported as Zot). Attackers surrounded the villages and, using a classic “surround-and-strike” tactic, fired shots into the air to flush residents out of their homes. As people fled, they were intercepted by attackers stationed at the village exits and hacked to death with machetes. The victims were predominantly women, children, and the elderly. The attack lasted approximately three hours.
A man was injured in a communal clash in Sabon Pegi community, Ibi LGA, Taraba State.
The military governor of Plateau State appointed Alhaji Aminu Mato, an Hausa-Fulani, as the Sole Administrator of the newly created Jos North Local Government Area. This decision was met with immediate and fierce opposition from indigenous ethnic groups (Berom, Anaguta, Afizere), who felt marginalized and viewed the creation of Jos North LGA, and this appointment, as a political maneuver by the Hausa-Fulani community to gain control over the state capital . Protests and riots erupted, leading to violent clashes between the indigenous groups and the Hausa-Fulani community. The crisis resulted in the burning of part of the Jos Main Market