Jos Attack Mom to Son: “Find Your Killers”
The grief of Mrs Favour Ayuba has taken a form that has gripped Nigeria. Days after suspected gunmen killed her son, Promise Gideon Ayuba, in the Palm Sunday terror attack that tore through the Angwan Rukuba area of Jos North Local Government Area, the bereaved mother stood over his coffin, drew a cutlass wrapped in white cloth from beneath her garment, placed it beside his body, and spoke directly to him, asking him to find his killers.
“If you want me to forget, baby, avenge your death. I carried you in my womb for nine months; you suckled at my breast. Baby, I trust you revenge for me, revenge for me. Please, wherever they are, follow them and avenge your death,” she said in Hausa, in a video that has since circulated widely across social media platforms.
The moment, raw with maternal anguish, has become one of the defining images of the aftermath of an attack that occurred on the evening of March 29, at around 7:45 p.m., when assailants opened fire on people at random in the Angwan Rukuba area, a densely populated urban residential community situated in Jos North LGA, Plateau State. The attackers were described by eyewitnesses as dressed in black camouflage with their faces covered, and armed with guns and cutlasses. Some witnesses said they arrived in a red Sharon van, while others reported motorcycles.
Casualty figures from the incident remain a subject of varying accounts across different sources. At least 27 people were killed, including a pregnant woman, while several others were injured, according to Dalyop Mwantiri, President of the Berom Youth Moulders Association. The motive and identity of the assailants remain unknown, and no group has claimed responsibility.
Mrs Ayuba, speaking amid intermittent sobbing audible in the video, made reference to the biblical story of Gideon as she addressed her son on what she said was his birthday.
“Today is your birthday. I am grateful to God that today is your birthday, baby. You don’t like seeing me in tears, and I will not weep for you. Baby, I have not eaten since Sunday. I am begging you, because you have not warmed food for me to eat, but from today I promise you I will eat. I have a gift for you, baby. I trust you; I named you Promise Gideon Ayuba. Gideon in the Bible went to war and came back victorious,” she said.
She had earlier been seen in a separate viral video clutching the lifeless body of her son shortly after he was shot.
Plateau State Governor Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang condemned the attack, describing it as “barbaric and unprovoked,” and said security agencies were actively pursuing those responsible. Following a visit to the Angwan Rukuba community, the governor said: “I stood with grieving families, listened to their pain, and shared in their loss.”
The Plateau State government imposed a 48-hour curfew across Jos North, effective from midnight on March 29 through April 1, in a bid to prevent further breakdown of law and order.
Violence in Plateau State is multidimensional, involving terror attacks, conflict between farmers and herders in rural communities, and ethno-religious tensions that have rocked the city since 2001.
The Angwan Rukuba attack, however, drew particular concern from analysts and community leaders, given that the area is not a rural farming settlement but a densely populated urban area with a diverse mix of residents, including students, civil servants, and traders, a profile that does not align with the pattern of farmer-herder clashes frequently associated with the region.
Mrs Ayuba’s act, however legally and socially freighted, has been widely interpreted as the expression of a mother pushed to the edge of endurance, a visible summation of grief that a community, still counting its dead, has found difficult to contain in silence.