THE PLATEAU I WANT



The months of March and April, before the rains began was my best time of the year when I was growing up. This period in Jos and environs is often marked by a rise in temperature and humidity. It was during this period that we, kids, could play to our hearts’ content because our mothers often stayed out late selling kosai, pap and the likes by the junction of Busa Buji Street. Sometimes, they stayed as late as past 12midnight because business was often slow around this time. Besides, the hot weather kept people outdoors longer and our mothers didn’t close until they had sold off their products or saw that it was impossible to do so. Of course we, kids didn’t care about all these. What we loved was the opportunity to have our playtime extended. We played till sleep coerced our eyes shut one after the other and we dropped right where we played. My friends at the time were my next door neighbours’ children- Murjanatu and her sister Wasila and AdaObi- our tenant’s daughter. We played, gossiped and fought a lot, as most little girls often did, but we were inseparable. During the Ramadan, I didn’t fast but I got to partake in the large sumptuous meals that were served as Imkar in the evening. At Christmas, we didn’t eat until every house in the neighbourhood had been served-our Muslim neighbours got served first as they were the closest and we could just pass the food over the fence the same way we often passed a hose connected to our tap to their house whenever Water Board remembered to supply us with water. It was all these that made growing up in Jos delicious and I didn’t realise how beautiful peace is until we lost it on that fateful Friday of September, 2001. Since then, our once peaceful state had been thrown into the arms of chaos and when you tell people from outside of Plateau State where you live, they’re quick to assume that you must be some kind of warrior to be able to survive what the media has made them believe is a battlefield. Since then, messages of villages and villagers getting attacked are greeted by the shaking of heads as we can no longer form words for our pain. So, when you ask me about the Plateau I want, I’d say I want the Plateau of my childhood days and more not this impostor that is today called Plateau State.

I want a Plateau celebrated as the tomato and potato hub of the world. If Flavour in his song, “Ada Ada", would describe a woman as “my tomato Jos”, we know that the tomatoes cultivated in Plateau State can be celebrated around the world as it is celebrated around the country and if there is ever a tomatoes competition, our tomatoes can compete and emerge winner.

I want a Plateau that is not synonymous with bomb blasts or attacks.

I want a Plateau for whose sake people from outside the country would cross oceans for to stay on vacation like people travel to France.

I want a Plateau where I don’t have to think twice before strolling through Angwan Rogo as a Christian.

I want a Plateau on whose streets young children can afford to freely fall asleep like I could as a child.

I want a Plateau which glitters at night because of street lights.

A Plateau where families are functional and our little boys do not revel in their ability to kill.

I want a Plateau so self-sufficient that the federal government’s subvention could be withheld and we wouldn’t care.

I want a Plateau where government owned schools are so good that no one will consider the mushroom private schools that decorate every neighbourhood.

I want a Plateau where peace drips from our pores and tolerance becomes a new language. A Plateau where those who come from other places do not fight daily with their hosts.

I want my beautiful Plateau back.



Abigail Abby Abok

Abbyabok@gmail.com