A decade after, survivors recall deadly Jos Terminus explosions
In May 2014, the Terminus area of Jos, in Plateau State was hit by twin bomb explosions; one of many the state experienced but by far the deadliest. A decade after the incident, Weekend Trust revisits the past to dig into one of Boko Haram’s deadliest attempts to bring Jos city to its knees. Survivors […]
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In May 2014, the Terminus area of Jos, in Plateau State was hit by twin bomb explosions; one of many the state experienced but by far the deadliest. A decade after the incident, Weekend Trust revisits the past to dig into one of Boko Haram’s deadliest attempts to bring Jos city to its knees. Survivors recall the events of the horrible attack that claimed the lives of at least 118 people and forever changed many lives.
Ten years ago, the ground shook at the Terminus area of Jos city, in Plateau State. The vibrations shattered windows and a massive fire engulfed the area. Flames bursted through shops, vehicles and consumed human flesh. In an instant, the streets of Jos were littered with rubble, human body parts and millions of broken maize grains.
Not much was left of the dismembered Peugeot J5 Boxer that cloaked the explosive device in tons of maize grains. Only the rage that busted from its belly while moving steadily through a traffic jam on a hot Tuesday afternoon.
As a dark smoke covered the sky, a second bomb tore through a Toyota Sienna, parked about 50 metres away. The city of Jos, had been struck by a terrorist attack, and within minutes, over 100 lives perished, many were injured and dozens of shops and vehicles destroyed.
Ten years since the deadly explosion, the acrid odour of roasting human flesh, mingled with fabrics, fruits and vegetables have been masked by an unpleasant smell of urine and fresh tobacco in the air. The wailings of victims have given way to blasting gospel music, and the bloodstains and ashes that once coloured the streets have been scrubbed clean. New asphalt lay over the crater that once bore evidence of the ferocious bomb explosion.
In essence, all traces of the tragic event of May 20, 2014 have been erased. Life has returned to the Terminus area, and the world has largely forgotten the carnage that took place. But for many survivors, the scars remain fresh.
Into the events of May 20, 2014
In the heart of Jos, the Terminus area stands as the city’s most cosmopolitan economic hub. Over the years, it has gained notoriety for congestion and disorder. It houses an old railway station, a bustling bus station, and the temporary site of the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH). The Terminus area is also home to the magnificent but now abandoned Terminus Main market; once the largest indoor market in West Africa. The market’s gates were closed in 2002 after an explosion compromised its structure, spilling traders onto the streets and making the area one of the busiest, most crowded, and disorganised in Jos.
But the Terminus area also symbolises Jos city’s once inter-tribal and inter-religious legacy that no other part of the city could match. Here, the invisible lines of ethno-religious living arrangements that define modern day Jos were missing, thus earning it the phrase, “neutral grounds.” And so, many witnesses believed it was this sense of inclusion, congestion and disorder that Boko Haram capitalised on to garner mass-casualty on May 20, 2014.
“It started like any other day,” said Anthony Ndubuisi, a resident of Jos, while recalling the hours before the Terminus twin explosions of 2014. However, a little after 3pm, what followed would be one of the deadliest bomb explosions in Nigeria.
Ten years ago, Ndubuisi was a happy man with a wife and three children. He had a makeshift shop squeezed up against the walls of the temporary site of JUTH. Like hundreds of traders, he was easily accessible to passers-by who walked along the streets or alighted from the various buses and taxis that parked illegally by the road. He sold shoes by the roadside and had just returned with new goods from Aba; a commercial hub in the south east state of Abia. The now father of six had planned to rest at home after the long trip, but a phone call from a customer would change the course of his life. “My wife asked me to just stay at home since it was already 2pm but I told her, somebody that would give me money, what am I doing at home, so l left.”
Soon after he discharged the customer, Ndubuisi lingered to chat with friends and other customers when a thunderous explosion flung him off his feet. “I have been hearing that Jesus will come, was this the end time? I asked myself. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I saw my leg in pieces, everywhere was dark, there was fire everywhere,” he recalled.
When he rolled on his side, he noticed the fence which gave support to his wares had collapsed. “It fell on my friend, severing his two legs and he was dead.” All seven customers and friends standing by Anthony Ndubuisi’s shop had been killed by the impact of the explosion. But he survived.
The sound of the explosion had reverberated through every part of Jos and residents as far as Bukuru roundabout; a 15-kilometre distance heard it. Mustapha Ibrahim Bako, Chairman Terminus Market was at that roundabout in Jos South LGA when he heard the sound of the first bomb and quickly made his way back.
With a hiss, he described the aftermath as a disaster no one wished for. “Even when we got here, there was nothing we could do and we had to turn back. I don’t want to remember it,” he said.
As a thick, black smoke billowed over the city, the realisation of what had happened began to make sense to Zulaihat Yunusa who was then a 300L student caught up in the blast while returning from neighbouring Bauchi State.
“It occurred around 3:15 pm to 3:20pm on a Tuesday on May 20, 2014,” she recalled. Zulaihat, who was in a tricycle with another female passenger holding a toddler said she was a few minutes away from home when the incident occurred.
“The moment it happened; I didn’t even hear the sound; I only felt a heavy object on my chest. And when I looked, it was a burning head; the baby of the woman riding the tricycle with me. The woman, her child and the tricycle driver all died,” she said.
“I heard people screaming and then the voice of someone saying I know this girl; she is my friend.” She woke up a few days later in a hospital where she was informed that she had survived a bomb explosion.
How twin bombs exploded 30 minutes apart
Augustine Chidozie, who had a make-shift shop a few metres from Anthony Ndubuisi remembers that there was a heavy traffic jam that afternoon of the explosion. “The cars were moving slowly, but it was common due to the taxis that often parked on the road and the many that attempted to make a U-turn. That increased the congestion,” he said.
Chidozie, who suffered second-degree burns and trauma, remembers that the explosive device had been concealed inside one of the vehicles moving steadily in the traffic. “It was like a truck, like this J5, yes, it was a J5, it was carrying goods; it was filled up with corn,” he said while describing the vehicle carrying the first explosives. The trader spoke with a sweeping assurance that it appeared the bomb had exploded before it got to its targeted destination. “I believe the hold-up may have affected the time for the explosion,” he said, “I don’t think the bomb was meant to explode where it did.”
“The first bomb was in a J5, popularly called a boxer and the second bomb was in a Sienna,” confirmed Hussaini Umaru Zakari, the Disaster Management Coordinator for the Red Cross Society of Nigeria in Plateau State.
Zakari was at Gangare, a community less than a kilometre away from the Terminus when he heard the first explosion. He remembers the chaos and gory situation he met at the scene. “We had the casualties on the first blast because people were unaware of it,” he said.
“People were crying, there were people that needed help because part of the area was burning. People wanted to help but they didn’t know what to do and the security were busy chasing people away. The fear of the security was to protect them in case there was the possibility of another explosion. But the people saw the action of the security as denying them the opportunity to give assistance,” explained Zakari.
Muhammad Tanko Shittu, a seasoned journalist with 25 years’ experience covering the conflict in Plateau State was one of the first journalists on the scene. Shittu remembers the screams of people trapped in the fire but said not much could be done to assist them. “Men, women and children were unable to run for their lives because they were trapped in the fire. Everyone was helpless, they couldn’t help them.”
Thirty minutes later and in the middle of the chaos, a second explosion tore through a Toyota Sienna that had been parked in the market earlier in that morning. Shittu watched this from a few metres and described the deafening sound of the explosion as scary. He recalled that after the first explosion, roadside traders had suddenly realised that the Sienna had been parked there in the morning and no one had made any attempt to move it.
“They quickly alerted security agents. I remember a military man started to disperse people but they didn’t listen, until he pulled out his gun and started to shoot in the air, shouting at people to disperse. Not up to two minutes later, the vehicle exploded. No one died from that explosion,” he said.
Hussaini Umaru Zakari of the Red Cross Society of Nigeria said the ticking sound that emanated from the Sienna a few minutes before it went off had confirmed suspicion that the car was loaded with explosives.
“Some people heard the ticking sound coming from the Sienna,” he said, adding that “It had been parked in the market earlier and so the security started to chase people away. That action of the security saved a lot of lives.”
With no official government or security report in the public domain, the website of the Plateau Peace Building Agency which keeps records of violent incidents in the state documents the casualty figure as announced by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) as 118. There is, however, no list of the identities of those who died or sustained injuries from the attack.
Operation Safe Haven; the Multi-security Task Force headed by a Nigerian Army Major General, which has been in charge of internal security in the state since 2010 and actively participated in the post bombing operations had also evaded a meeting with this newspaper, despite an official letter of request.
However, the Director-General, Research and Planning at the Governor’s office and the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in 2014, Professor Chris Kwaja described the Terminus bombings as an “ugly situation” where evil visited Plateau State.
“For evil, it was not about which religion you belonged to, which ethnicity, which political party or your gender. It was about identifying soft targets,” he said.
Kwaja, a senior lecturer and researcher with Centre for Peace and Security Studies at the Modibbo Adama University Yola, in Adamawa State said due to the huge humanitarian component, the Plateau State Government had engaged the federal government through the NEMA to see how best the agency would work with the state to provide relief.
“We had Plateau Specialist Hospital, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Bingham University Teaching Hospital and Our Lady of Fatima all providing support when it came to the immediate medical assistance that was required,” he said.
The pain of losing loved ones
Ambassador Barnabas Kennedy Ejeh wished May 20, 2014 could be erased from the calendar. His 18-years-old daughter, Shekinah, was the apple of his eyes before he lost her to the Terminus bomb explosion. Shekinah, then a student of Business Education at the Federal College of Education, Akwanga, died three months to her graduation.
“She was my beloved among my five children and the closest to me. She was very brilliant. She was a fine girl,” he said.
As his memory drifted to the happy days before the explosion, Amb. Ejeh said he misses everything about his late daughter. “She was such a caring person, very close to my heart.” He said 10 years since her death, “it still feels like it happened yesterday.”
Few minutes before the explosion, Amb. Ejeh had called his daughter and she informed him that she was at the Terminus market to pick up home supplies, but would be home in time for the evening fellowship. He took a nap and woke up to his son’s phone call alerting him of an explosion at the Terminus market.
Then came the frantic efforts to reach his daughter on the phone but her number never connected. “I was told to be patient, that she would come home but when she didn’t, I had no alternative but to go to the market. On getting to Plateau roundabout, the military had taken over the place and they were not allowing access to the area.”
After several unsuccessful attempts to get to the scene, he noticed vehicles piled with the dead and injured rushing to Plateau Hospital and decided to go there.
“I went to the emergency centre but I could not find her and the only thing I could do was to enter the mortuary where they were heaping corpses of people. I was checking one by one and I found my daughter,” he said.
“It was indescribable,” the father of five said in an attempt to describe what he saw and how he felt in the midst of piles of human remains. “Some people were battered and shattered. But in her own case, she was not affected to that extent. There was not much cut on her and her body was complete, but I know something must have happened that led to her death.”
For others, the relief of finding their loved ones alive was short-lived. Auwalu Abdullahi, a tailor and a member of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria understands this pain. His infant nephew was trampled upon in the stampede that followed the explosion and died two days later. The horror of the incident and the death of her infant son took a mental toll on his sister, Hauwa and she died 18 months later.
“On that day,” he said, “she came back home looking dishevelled, a few minutes after the explosion. We all heard it, everyone in Jos heard it. We then noticed that the infant boy strapped to her back was missing and she could not explain how, where and when.”
Few hours later, her son was found to have been rescued by a Red Cross officer.
“We brought him home but he died the next day because he had been stepped on during the pandemonium. My sister also battled with sickness and succumbed to the emotional pain 18 months later,” he said.
Why Jos was targeted
In May 2014, the city of Jos, in north central Nigeria was in the middle of a tumultuous decade of ethno-religious riots. It had also become a target for Boko Haram, the islamist group that stunned the world a month earlier with the abduction of over 200 girls from Government Secondary School Chibok in Borno State.
Between 2010 and 2015, Boko Haram, which became prominent after the killing of its leader, Muhammad Yusuf by the Nigeria Police unleashed a flood of bombers across northern Nigeria. Aside from its usual targets of Borno and Yobe and Adamawa, the insurgents began to hit on soft targets, security and government establishments in the FCT, Kano, Kaduna, and Plateau states.
The website of the Plateau Peace Building Agency, established in 2016 to enhance early warning systems and promote peacebuilding efforts document at least nine explosions to have hit the state between December 2010 and July 2015. Over 250 lives were lost in the attacks with three of them within the Terminus vicinity.
Analysts are uncertain as to why the insurgents were fixated on Jos. However, there are suggestions that the state’s history of ethno-religious riot and its strategic location as a gateway to the northern and southern parts of the country could be a contributing factor.
In a 2014 article titled: “Insurgents and Terror in Jos, Nigeria: Where next?” Prof. Chris Kwaja described Boko Haram’s acts of terror as: “Well coordinated, sophisticated, and consistently unpredictable in terms of both location and victims.”
Speaking to this newspaper, Prof. Kwaja said: “Within that period, Plateau was also experiencing other forms of insecurity,” and further explained that Plateau’s strategic location in the middle of the north and south makes it a strategic location for terrorist groups who want to draw attention to a national calamity.
“I am not in the minds of the terrorists but I think that from the perspectives of terrorist groups, how do I draw attention to the act? I have a state that is very strategic, and Plateau is a confluence of identities and by hitting those targets, attention is drawn to a national calamity,” he stressed.
Mohammed Tanko Shittu explained that the Terminus, being a neutral area where Muslims and Christians were free to trade and the congestion may have also been an attractive spot for Boko Haram.
“The residents of Plateau State, particularly Jos were trying to curb the sectarian crisis and I think Boko Haram was thinking people were trying to stabilise to rebuild trust and confidence among themselves and they wanted to create the problems for them,” he said.
10 years later, Terminus wears a new look
Despite the dangers that road-side trading poses, many traders continued to defy multiple government bans around the Terminus area. But much has changed since the Terminus explosion.
In March 2024, Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State signed into law Executive Order 003, to regulate urban development and vehicular traffic within the greater Jos Master Plan. This has led to the evacuation of traders from the streets of Terminus. But only time will tell, if the enforcement of this new law will endure.
Dr Gyang Bere, the Director of Press and Public Affairs to Governor Mutfuwang, says his principal is implementing a holistic approach to ensure all citizens of the state are protected from natural and terrorist related danger.
“We all know what the Terminus area looked like around 2014 and why it became a target because of the kind of population of people that come around for transactions,” he said referring to the governor’s latest policy on urban renewal which has seen road-side traders evacuated from the streets.
Dr Bere explained that traders are expected to carry out their businesses in designated places, not clustering around the road. “Government is trying to see how Jos can be rebuilt,” he said, adding that “we are trying to bring the people of Plateau State together irrespective of religion, ethnicity and wherever you are coming from,” he said.
Though the Terminus area wears a new look, without a memorial, many have forgotten the events of May 20, 2024. But survivors say they are still hunted by images of what happened 10 years ago.
“You can’t just forget something like that so easily. I know so many people that lost their loved ones, it is not easy to forget,” said Augustine Chidozie.
“Till date, when I pass through the area, I still remember the hole created by the bomb,” said Shittu, adding that: “I look at the wall of the former JUTH though it has been fixed. It was terrible, beyond the level someone can comprehend and explain.”
The road to recovery
“There was no doubt that some families have to live with the scar of the incident for the rest of their lives,” said Prof. Kwaja, who further said: “They’ve had to live without their loved ones. I can imagine how unbearable it was for them at that time and how they had to start life afresh. It will never be the same for them.”
The Weekend Trust found that there is no official record of the identities of those who died, nor was there financial assistance for families and those who sustained injuries.
“There was no help, no compensation except for the constant writing of names by different organisations,” said Chidozie who said the last time someone visited claiming to compile the list of victims of the Terminus twin bombings was two years ago. “We never heard anything since then,” he said.
The road to recovery has not only been painful but expensive for survivors like Anthony Ndubuisi who was unconscious when rescuers conveyed him to Bingham University Hospital and later a private hospital where his leg was amputated.
After exhausting his resources, he was later moved to the Jos University Teaching Hospital where the Plateau State Government had directed free medical care for victims of the explosion.
“Even at that, we were the ones buying our drugs,” Ndubuisi, who spent about six months in JUTH before he was discharged, explained. “There was no assistance from any government or private organisation. I only used my own money to sponsor myself and to purchase a prosthetic leg and other things to feed my family,” he reiterated.
A decade later, the physical burns she sustained may have healed, but Zulaihat, who developed a heart condition as a result of the trauma said she is yet to heal internally. Like Ndubuisi, she said survivors of the explosion had been responsible for their drugs even while undergoing treatment at government designated hospitals. They continue to spend resources on their post-hospital care. “Till date, I see a specialist, about three to four times a year for my heart,” she said but exclaimed: “It was a bad experience. But Alhamdulillah. I am proud that I went through such a thing and I am alive.”
For the Ejeh family, the loss of their daughter has left a void. “Even mentioning her name is a problem in the family. We don’t even mention her name in the house,” said Shekina’s father who said gradually, God has begun to give the family healing.
This story was produced with the support of Daily Trust Foundation