Hellfire in Zaria: I Saw the Three Trucks Loaded with the Dead

By Musa Muhammad Waki’a

The news from Zaria found us on the road to Nasarawa that Saturday, a stark interruption that turned our car around. We arrived in Gyallesu under the cover of darkness, only to find the streets choked by soldiers. Every path was sealed. Our only way in was through the clinging cold of a swamp, our movements furtive as we slipped past the final military checkpoint closing in on the Sheikh’s gate.

Dawn broke on Sunday not with light, but with the sound of stones clattering against armored steel. Our pathetic arsenal was met with the deafening crack of shelling. They advanced relentlessly, a wall of fire and metal, and when their push ended, the air was thick with silence. So many were gone. We, the last handful, retreated into the house, listening to the soldiers’ boots crunching outside in the gravel.

Our final, desperate strategy was a grim procession: we would go out one by one. Each man who stepped through the doorway was met with a volley of shots, his body crumpling before he could take three steps. When my turn came, I filled my lungs with the name of God. “Allahu Akbar.” I chanted it like a mantra, walking into the storm. The first bullet hit, a searing punch, but my legs kept moving. It was the second, shattering my thigh, that finally sent me to the ground. Then, the world dissolved into muzzle flashes and the dull thud of boots against my body. I felt a sting on my scalp, and then the warm, relentless flow of blood. The beating only stopped when I no longer flinched.

I lay there, playing dead, as the soldiers moved with grisly efficiency. They piled the lifeless and the nearly-lifeless together. Then they called in the thugs, who descended like vultures to pick pockets and strip watches from the fallen. It was the chill of the morning dew seeping into my wounds that shocked me back to consciousness.

Through a haze of pain, I saw them bring three massive military trucks. They loaded the bodies, stacking them until the vehicles groaned under the weight. A soldier’s voice, distorted by a loudspeaker, demanded the Sheikh. When no answer came, the air sharpened with the smell of petrol. A match was struck, and the house erupted.

The heat was a physical force. Inside, the screams of women and children twisted together with the roar of the flames. A soldier stood near me, unmoved, and said, “You will die to meet another round of tortures in hell.” A bulldozer growled to life, its metal jaw tearing into the building’s side, allowing the soldiers to pour bullets into the exposed rooms. They finally dragged the Sheikh out, bleeding from multiple wounds, and mocked him. “This is the beginning of your end.” I saw them pull his wife away. I heard a soldier declare the Sheikh dead. Then, they cut the power, scaled the walls, and rained explosives down from above, ensuring nothing inside remained.

For those of us who had survived the massacre, a new ordeal began. We were taken to the barracks, where torture was a rigorous, insulting addition to our injuries. They bound us tightly and threw us into an underground dungeon, a tomb for the living. Later, we were transferred to a larger room, where over a hundred broken brothers and sisters huddled together. Our final destination was a cold floor at the ABU Teaching Hospital in Shika, where the soldiers dumped us, their final act of disposal for the broken and the scarred.

Culled from the book "Survivors of the December 2015 Massacre of Shiites in Nigeria: The Unsilenced Voices". 

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