I visited Jos in July 2023. Those were five days of intense discovery, not exactly in the explicit nature of the stories I had heard​,​ but rather the things unsaid, the quiet way the city rolled past our car windows and keke openings, its joy checked into pockets our wandering fingers couldn’t reach. The people were friendly but hesitant in conversation, smiling with caution, sort of. Connected through a mutual friend, my friend and co-traveller Chiedoziem Chukwudera met with Jesse Jagz at his house. Set on hills as most of the houses were, it was an expansive one-storey building with wide balconies and dim lighting. He’s been living in the city since 2014 or about, a practical means of shutting himself from the music industry and its direct proponent in Chocolate City which fucked him up and continues to hold the masters of his first album till date.  

Jesse Jagz welcomed us inside the compound, a smile beaming on his sweaty face. He mentioned the name of the friend who connected us, and I commented likewise on the person’s fineness of character, the three of us walking upstairs. The living room was sparse and filled with austere posters and pictures, its scent reminiscent of an old library. We sat on sofas in the balcony and talked about the music industry in its current state, the levity of its biggest stars, but mostly we asked questions about his art and process, and even then, he wasn’t very forthcoming. I asked who Hadiza Aboki was, the lady to whom he dedicated ‘Burning Bush’, which is arguably his most poignant record ever.  

‘She was my classmate who died,’ he said, with a wry laugh that failed to disguise the pain escaping from his mouth. I said no more, but days after Chiedoziem mentioned how quickly Jesse had brushed off her death, obviously not out of disregard but not willing to touch the nerve of its pain wracking memories. Likewise, his music evades the most essential parts of him; I found that quality during my time in Jos, a place so beautifully marked yet slyly expressive, so you always seek something in it. What it is, the beholder can’t really say, but the feeling is undoubtedly strong. And like any magician worth their salt, Jesse Jagz knows it’s the trick of hiding that is the showcase.  

And yet it was M.I’s ‘Wild Wild West’ that Chiedoziem rapped as we ascended Yingi Layout which led from Books2Africa, a partly charity-based organization we had visited, whose warehouse had pallets stacked with titles across different genres. It was one of my most poignant experiences in the city, as the street’s flawlessly tarred road appeared in front of us, the low-rise buildings and passersby emerging into view. “Better get your gun, better get your vest/ Cos in J Town is the wild wild west, down here everyone cursed, no one blessed,” he admonished in the memorable hook, setting the tone for his incinerating verses. In a sweeping draw of his pen, the second verse advances the nostalgic gaze of the first, carrying the city’s pain on its shoulders, and the listener is brought closer to actual reality:  

Yeah, wishful is, my memories of peaceful bliss 

Now streets full of deceitfulness 

Evil is now around where all of my people lives 

Need a hero quick, J town I miss how you were 

Tell me, how did this occur? 

Now memories of peace are a blur  

And you were so pretty I swear 

Driving through the city thinking this is not her 

She seems so strange, when did she change? 

Blood on her street, smoke in her sky 

Can’t feel her heartbeat, no hope in her eye 

Orphans, coffins, bastards, caskets, mass burials 

How we gonna move past this? the sun about to set 

I’m getting ready for the war, I fear it isn’t done yet! 

In retrospect, ‘Burning Bush’ is the most natural extension of ‘Wild Wild West’. If M.I strikes the attentive poise of a journalist, Jesse Jagz is a poet. Jesse Jagz is not a cartographer of expansive moments but rather a painter of detail, in this case, a portrait of how two young people’s exploration of weed leads towards learning the bigger truths about life. At his storytelling best, it vibrates with religious allusion (daughter of Eve and the seed of Jacob) and political imagery (take the election booths and then burn it to the roots), relating some focused commentary on the modern world. By using the language of religion, Jesse Jagz creates a mirror image of the instruments that bring his people pain, which is the reason why ‘[he] knows to keep [himself] silent cause the kingdom suffereth violence.’  

In 2001, for over ten days, Jos was embroiled in a deadly crisis that left thousands dead and several thousands more displaced. There are numerous reports on the causes of the crisis, but most connect it to religious tension that had been brewing due to politics. Human Rights Watch, which conducted extensive on-the-ground investigation noted that: 

…what little coverage there was prior to September 11 had tended to portray the violence in Jos as a religious conflict, with Christians and Muslims attacking each other because of faith. In reality, the conflict was more political and economic than religious. It stemmed from a longstanding battle for control of political power and economic rivalry between different ethnic groups and between those labeled ‘indigenous’ or ‘non-indigenous’ inhabitants of the area.  

David Nwogbaga, who wrote a paper titled ‘Analysis of Ethno-Religious Conflict in Nigeria: The Jos (Plateau) Experiences, 2001-2011’, related how Jos, which was ‘formerly known as “The Home of Peace and Tourism” was satirized into “The Home of Pieces and Terrorism”’. In his introduction Nwogbaga traced how conflict began in the early eighties, starting from the Islamic crisis between the sects Darika and Tijanniya; and then the chieftaincy crisis between Mwanghavul and Pyem in 1987; the Hausa–Berom conflict over indigene-settler dichotomy (who owns this land?) that same year; and in 1991, the crisis in Jos particularly intensified due to the chairmanship of the then newly-created Jos North and Jos South, which further exacerbated due to the political reasons discussed above.  

The governments of Joshua Dariye, who was governor between 1999 and 2007, and David Jonah Jang, were especially heated periods for these conflicts, as the former’s charges of embezzlement and money laundering saw him arrested and reinstated through several spells until 2007, when Jang succeeded him. A devout Christian, Jang, according to his detractors, sought to fight against the Muslim domination of northern Nigeria, and did so by making decisions that were supposedly in the sole political interest of Christians. When the 2001 crisis broke out, and another in 2008 and 2010, the echoes of these deep discomforts were heard all over the country.