by Joel Gomiyar in Nigeria
The village of Dogo Nahawa in Nigeria’s north-central Plateau State was the scene of a massacre of over 500 Christians by suspected Fulani militiamen in March 2010. It is also where Mallam Idi, an elderly Muslim man, has continued to live protected, provided for and free to pray according to Islamic practice.
No one has ever been prosecuted for organising the 2010 attack. The tolerance extended to the elderly Muslim depends entirely on the choices of his neighbours rather than on any institutional protection.
Mallam Idi, who is originally from Daura in Katsina State, northwestern Nigeria, told Christian Solidarity International (CSI) he migrated to Dogo Nahawa as a young man on a donkey, travelling from Kazaure in the neighbouring state of Jigawa to work in the area’s tin mining trade. He said he can no longer specify his age or the year he arrived because he lacks formal schooling and records of his birth.
His brothers, including one who serves as a police officer, are aware of his whereabouts and visit him occasionally, though he has refused their offers to relocate him.
Sixteen years among the survivors
Gunmen surrounded Dogo Nahawa and the nearby villages of Zot and Ratsat before dawn on 7 March 2010, firing weapons into the air to force residents out of their homes before attacking them with guns and machetes. The Berom, the predominantly Christian ethnic group native to the area and engaged mainly in farming, buried hundreds of victims in mass graves within days.
Most Muslim residents and Fulani herdsmen in the region had already withdrawn from Dogo Nahawa before the attack. Their withdrawal followed suspicion that had built up after violence between Christian and Muslim communities in Jos, the Plateau State capital, in 2001 and 2008, which spread to other areas of the state before reaching Dogo Nahawa.
Mallam Idi said he locked himself in a room and survived by hiding until the attackers left.
None of the Christian residents attempted to retaliate against him following the massacre, even as they counted their dead, he said. He now lives on the food, shelter and other support his Christian neighbours provide, in exchange for the mining and farming labour he once contributed to the community.
He said his neighbours include him in community deliberations, sending for him by name when he is absent from meetings. They also allow him to perform his Islamic obligations, including ablution and prayer, without interference.
Monday Dogo Pam, the community leader of Dogo Nahawa, confirmed that the arrangement has held for decades.
Tolerance without accountability
The people identified as having organized the Dogo Nahawa attack were never brought to trial, according to Human Rights Watch, which has documented the pattern of unresolved communal killings in Plateau State.
Nazila Ghanea, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, said after an official visit to Nigeria in June 2026 that “impunity and lack of accountability have reportedly entrenched cycles of fear and violence” in the country.
Mallam Idi’s 16 years of unhindered prayer inside Dogo Nahawa show freedom of religion holding at the level of one household and one village. Its Christian residents have forgiven him, even though the massacre is attributed to men of his faith.
No prosecution, policy or precedent guarantees that this coexistence will continue. It depends alone on the goodwill of Dogo Nahawa’s residents.
