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.
7 Mar 2010 · Dogo Na Hauwa, Jos South, Plateau
Deaths
500
Kidnapped
0
Total casualties
500
Perpetrators
Communal/Ethnic Militias
Response
Acting President Goodluck Jonathan put security forces on “red alert” and directed troops to hunt down the perpetrators. A dusk‑to‑dawn curfew was imposed. The National Security Adviser was sacked. Troops eventually arrived in the villages after the attackers had left, but survivors accused security forces of failing to respond for hours despite distress calls. The military said it took two hours to react; by that time, the attackers had “finished their job and left”.
Displacement
1000+
Socioeconomic drivers
Land disputes, grazing conflicts, ethnic rivalries, and religious tensions in Plateau State.
Trajectory
The Dogon Nahawa massacre was the deadliest single incident in a four‑day wave of violence that followed the January 2010 Jos riots. It directly triggered a massive military deployment and set the stage for further cycles of reprisal. The pattern of “reprisal‑and‑counter‑reprisal” had been established after the 2001 and 2008 Jos crises, and the 2010 massacre deepened the trauma.
Cycle notes
The March 2010 massacre directly echoed the January 2010 Kuru Karama massacre, in which Christians killed at least 150 Muslims. It also mirrored the 2001 Jos riots (1,000+ dead) and the 2008 Jos crisis (700+ dead) in both its sectarian character and its political‑electoral timing. The tactic of surrounding villages and using machetes to slaughter civilians had been used in the 2004 Yelwa massacre and would be repeated in the 2016 Agatu massacre and the 2018 Benue massacres. The failure to prosecute perpetrators after 2001 and 2008 was a direct driver of the 2010 violence, just as the impunity that followed the 2010 massacre would enable future atrocities.
Pattern
The Retaliatory Spiral
Related — Communal Violence
Tiv militias attacked Bantage community, shooting four people and setting a farm ablaze.
Gboogboo community in Katsina Ala LGA was attacked, resulting in two deaths.
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