Atsen survived, but his two brothers were cut down by machetes and tossed by the mob into a well, among over 300 people slaughtered in the worst violence to hit Nigeria in years.
The region's first election in over a decade sparked fighting that degraded into ethnic and religious violence in area where Nigeria's Christians and Muslims live uneasily side by side.
The central city of Jos lies along a meridian splitting Nigeria's predominantly Muslim and pastoralist northern population from southern Christian and animist farming communities. While both groups live peacefully in crowded cities across Nigeria, they intermingle most closely in this fertile, hilly "middle belt," where an intense struggle for resources is under way. Northerners need pastures for their far-roaming flocks, while southerners want to grow corn.
The structure of Nigeria's government also exacerbates ethnic tensions, since local governments control enormous budgets in Africa's biggest oil producer, making the spoils of an election a coveted prize.
Atsen said he told his family's women and girls to get away as fast as they can as the riots began.
"I was standing with my two brothers to protect the houses. They charged at us. I grabbed an ax and started swinging it," he said Monday, huddling at an improvised government camp housing 1,500 displaced people, Muslims and Christians alike.
Although the 34-year-old trader lived, his heart ached for his brothers.
"My brothers couldn't find weapons. I saw one brother holding up his hands and begging for his life, but they brought the machete down across his head," he said. "My other brother was also cut and died there. They put the bodies in the well and set fire to everything."
Some 12,000 people were seeking refuge at 13 makeshift camps across Jos, said Manasseh Panpe of the Nigerian Red Cross. Nearby, homes, churches and mosques were in ruins Monday, and three corpses floated in a river.
After Thursday's election, the violence began early Friday amid reports that governing People's Democratic Party had prevailed over the main opposition All National People's Party. Opposition members alleged the vote in one ward had been rigged.
The clashes ended Saturday after the military was deployed.
Jos has a long history of ethnic and religious clashes. In 2004, fighting nearby left up to 700 people dead and in 2001 about 1,000 people perished in religious and ethnic riots.
Nigeria's federal constitution prohibits parties from appealing solely along ethnic lines, but local politics are still highly divided. With government contracts, scholarships and jobs frequently withheld from minority groups, the perks of being part of the majority are enormous.
Thus, anger flares and turns into violence on allegations of rigged elections. And most of Nigeria's elections have been flawed since the country's 1960 independence from Britain, including a federal election in 2007 that saw President Umaru Yar'Adua come to power.
"There's a widespread belief that your vote doesn't count, and it gives rise to these outbursts of violence," says Eric Guttschuss, a Nigeria researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
There were some indications the latest violence was orchestrated, which has been the case before in Jos and in many other parts of Nigeria, particularly in the southern oil region where politicians arm criminal gangs to help rig elections.
Atsen said the mob who attacked his house was exhorted to kill.
"There was a commander who shouted go to so-and-so area and finish the non-believers," he said at his camp, where women queued for bread, children ran around and men sat under trees, chatting. Muslim victims also sat nearby.
Hours after the death of Atsen's brothers, a Christian gang came to the house where Ahmed Stanley was staying in Jos.
Stanley, a 36-year old Muslim statistician who normally lives in South Africa, was shot at. The bullet grazed his neck but he escaped as the house burned.
He blamed the violence on jealousy between neighbours.
"There has always been tension here," he said. "There are differences in religion and ethnicity and few resources, so people are easily divided."
But he also had harsh words for those exploiting poor people.
"Organizers mobilize miscreants and the people who have nothing, then tell them to attack. When such people see looting and stealing they see an opportunity to gain something, so they join in," he explained. "That's how it escalates."
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