Newspaper reports have it that one Sale Bayeri, a self-styled leader of the Plateau Fulanis, openly confessed at a press conference in Abuja to being party to the March 7th Dobon Na-Hauwa killings. I sincerely hope the Police have taken him in for questioning. If not, then the end of the Jos crisis is not yet in sight.
Sale Bayeri also claimed during that press conference to being a descendant of Fulanis who have been residing in Plateau State for so long that he cannot trace which or when his forefathers first settled there. He, therefore, claims to be a Plateau State indigene. I want Bayeri to define an indigene by the Constitution of Nigeria and he will find that he does not qualify to be an indigene of Plateau State. He is, rather, a Nigerian citizen who was born and has settled in another part of the country other than his indigenous home. By the Nigerian Constitution, birth and length of stay in another part of Nigeria do not automatically confer indigeneship status.
Bayeri's position now is that some of his privileges as a Nigerian citizen are inexerciseable. Such privileges can only be exercised when he returns to his indigenous home. Privileges such title to land by inheritance (his forefathers grazing land in Jos was bought), Federal appointments to represent his home State, etc. Meanwhile, I sincerely hope he is cooling his heals in a Police cell.
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