PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

RE-GENOCIDE ON THE PLATEAU: THE WAY OUT

ndajika@yahoo.com

Last week’s column on the last round of what seems to have become routine massacres on the Plateau elicited a torrent of mobile phone texts - 215 in all from readers of The Nation - and a few emails. As usual many of them were downright abusive. Several, however, were civil and provided food for thought on how to deal with the issue. Below are a few of those reactions, some of them edited for grammar, punctuation and space.   

Sir,

  I would like to start by saying that I never miss an opportunity to read you on the back page of the Nation Daily on Wednesdays. I have found most of your contributions to be professional and balanced. Sometimes though, I perceive a certain slant when issues have to do with religion and ethnicity. By this I mean that your bias tends towards protecting things Islamic/ Hausa /Fulani. I cannot say that I blame you entirely, because I find that most human beings will be more favourably disposed towards their own.

With regards to the Genocide on the Plateau, I would like to share a few things. You seemed to be somewhat displeased with the banner headlines that followed the counter genocide in Jos last Sunday. You were not too pleased that in January, when it appeared that Muslims were on the receiving end of an attack by “rampaging youth”, the media appeared not to give too much publicity to that particular event. This, you posited, was as a result of the media being “instinctively hostile” to Muslims. The question we should really be asking ourselves is ….why does this appear to be so?

From my little knowledge of religious upheavals in Nigeria, it does seem to me that a greater percentage of them have been initiated by Muslims. Unfortunately, I do not have at my finger tips all the dates and instances when this has occurred. Nobody from the Muslim side has ever really refuted these allegations effectively. I do not know all the tenets of Islam, but I am dead certain that tolerance is one of the pillars. Mohammed, with all due respect, can you say in general that we have seen a particularly tolerant Islamic community in Nigeria? I must qualify that by saying Northern Nigeria. It appears that the Muslims of Northern extraction seem to get along better with non Muslims when they are outside the North. This of course is my personal opinion. I suggest that the media and people at large have become weary and impatient with the way and manner Muslims have conducted themselves in this country.

I perceive that you do not really like the terms “settlers” and “indigenes”. Quite frankly, neither do I but unfortunately, we as a country have operated a blighted or flawed federalism and this is an issue that we had all better start to deal with. Who is a settler? When does a settler cease to be a settler? We are all witnesses to the Ife/Modakeke conflicts. They have their roots in this same issue and both groups are from the same ethnic group. Here I may tend to agree with you that the Jos crisis is not totally about religion. They have roots in resources (economic), sadly because the protagonists can be divided into two broad camps i.e. Muslim and Christian, religion has been thrust to the fore and it will be extremely difficult for anyone to convince otherwise.

Sadly, the Jos issue as with most conflicts in this country has never been professionally dealt with. In conflict studies, there is something called a conflict tree. What most people see of the tree is the foliage. However, there is a trunk which supports that foliage and there are roots from which the trunk has sprung forth. In order to understand the essence of that tree, the roots must be unearthed. In the Jos conflict, we must get to the roots or real issues and stop dealing with the manifestations. The conflicts have their roots in history and surely we cannot discard our history. This however, is what we have done as Nigerians. We have, for reasons best known to us avoided the real issues. Attempting to wish them away as it were. You know what happens? The issues just mutate and manifest in a different way. So what may have been an issue between pastoralists and farmers possibly over land, has become largely, an ethno-religious matter. The panels and the probes will yield nothing until we begin to professionally analyze, interpreted and where necessary, map out the conflict. It goes beyond panels consisting of retired and serving generals, retired/serving jurists and other “eminent” Nigerians to bodies manned by proven academics…..historians, sociologists, conflict managers, psychologists and the like.

Mediation teams manned by trained personnel will provide an avenue for all the aggrieved to have their say. The beauty of this is that the solutions as to how these incessant conflicts can be stopped will come from the people themselves. There is a vast difference between what the government thinks that the people need for peaceful coexistence, and what the people must have. We must act fast on the Plateau, for already; the Early Warning Signs of another reprisal are in the offing.

Mazino Obaro Ikime,

Ibadan.

Sir,

I have read with pains your many articles on Jos and your religious sentiments expressed therein. I am pained not because I practice a different faith from yours but because I share the same profession with you and I expect I should consider you a senior colleague. But your dispositions on all issues have denied you of such honour and respect.

 You have lost your steam as a good journalist. No wonder you have become the errand boy of the likes of the discredited IBB and co.

Let me remind you that the hatred you have demonstrated against Jang and his people have fallen short of an objective journalist and your commentary on the pages of newspapers has only exposed you to hatred because you should know the dysfunctional effect of the media if I may remind you again.

Please have a second thought on what you write.

Steven Kwande.  

Sir,

For the first time ever since I have been reading your column, I didn’t feel like wringing your neck. Then it occurred to me the attackers were not Hausas but Fulanis. In any case well done for saying the truth.

 Ola James,

 Lagos.

Sir,

Your article has truly hit the nail right on the head. The problem on the Plateau is simply FAILURE OF GOVERNANCE. Jang is arrogant, know-it-all, but very incompetent and a curse on Plateau. Three years into his government he has not commissioned any old or new project that is even the size of a pin, other than being at “war” with every other Plateau man and other ethnic groups. In Pankshin he only inspected on-going LGA road project and not commissioned anything!! Even those of us his kinsmen, the Beroms, walk the street of Plateau with our heads down and in shame for his non-performance and promoting ethnicity, vindictiveness, etc, at the expense of our future generation. He is good riddance to bad rubbish and we pray he goes soon for a lasting peace.

Fom Dung-Gwom,

 Jos.

Sir,

I would want to commend you for calling the killing of the Beroms last Sunday Genocide. That is exactly what it is! While the January 17 crisis saw people of all faiths and tribes killed, this was targeted at a particular race. I also agree that the crisis in Jos is political and economic than religious.

 You made mention of how Jos was peaceful before now, so what went wrong? The creation of Jos North, which the Hausa/Fulani have claimed was created for them, is the root cause of the crises that have rocked Jos. I also agree that the solution lies more with the leaders and the structure of our federation. We need to revisit the residual issues of our land. We need state police to enforce state laws and allow states control their resources and collect their VAT or Sales Tax. Then we can hold the governors who are the chief security officers of their states responsible for any breakdown of law and order.

H. Pam,

 Jos.

Sir,

Going by the way you single out Governor Jang as the perpetrator of the Jos crisis makes me believe you Hausa/Fulani would prefer a lily-livered coward who will be cowed up and surrender to your expansionist tendencies. Jang is God-sent to the good people of Plateau and no amount of evil plan can change that.

Dave, Warri.