The grief in Plateau is no longer distant. It is sitting in hospital wards, in quiet conversations, in families trying to make sense of loss that should never have happened.
Over the weekend, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, walked into that reality at the Jos University Teaching Hospital.
He met survivors of the Angwan Rukuba attack not as headlines, but as people carrying pain, uncertainty, and the weight of a tragedy that has become too familiar.
Accompanied by his wife, Dr Martina Yilwatda, the visit was framed as more than a political gesture. It was an attempt to show presence in a moment where words alone often fall short.
Yet even within that moment, the message was pointed.
Yilwatda described the attack as “barbaric, painful, and unacceptable,” but he moved quickly beyond condemnation to something more urgent. Plateau, he insisted, cannot continue to experience violence in cycles that are acknowledged, mourned, and then repeated.
That insistence reflects a growing national fatigue.
For communities in Plateau, insecurity is no longer an abstract policy issue. It is a lived experience that shapes daily decisions, limits movement, and slowly erodes confidence in both safety and stability.
During the visit, the APC National Chairman announced a donation of ₦15 million to support victims of the attack and other vulnerable patients receiving care at the hospital. The support, he noted, is intended to ease immediate medical and financial pressure on affected families.
However, even that gesture was positioned within a larger conversation.
“No society can make meaningful progress where innocent citizens continue to live in fear,” he said, linking security directly to development and long-term stability.
That connection is difficult to ignore.
Plateau State holds significant economic and cultural value, from agriculture to tourism. Still, persistent violence continues to weaken its potential, discouraging investment and limiting opportunities, particularly for young people.
Yilwatda’s intervention, therefore, goes beyond immediate relief. It calls for a shift in how the crisis is approached.
He urged leaders across political, traditional, and community structures to move from reactive responses to coordinated prevention. That includes stronger intelligence gathering, deeper community engagement, and more consistent security interventions designed to stop attacks before they happen.
At the same time, he emphasised that the responsibility is shared.
Communities, he argued, must reject silence, division, and complicity, while security institutions must adapt their strategies to match the evolving nature of threats. Without that alignment, progress will remain slow and fragile.
The visit also extended beyond the hospital. Yilwatda paid condolences to the Ujah Anaguta, acknowledging the cultural and communal dimensions of the loss and reinforcing the need for collective healing.
Still, the broader question remains; Will this moment lead to sustained action, or will it fade into another cycle of outrage and remembrance?
Because for the victims in those hospital rooms, and for the communities still on edge, the stakes are not political.
They are personal, immediate, and deeply human.
And as Yilwatda put it, the expectation is no longer negotiable.
The killings must stop.
