REPLY TO TIMMAUS MATTHIAS

RE: FOR THIS TO BE THE LAST COMMUNAL CRISIS
Your article of Wednesday, February 03, 2010 in the Nation Newspaper on the above subject matter refers. Your write-up was informative and appeared to have been written in good faith. However, your penultimate sentence did you a great disservice, in my opinion. You said, “The truth is that the so-called Jessawa are bona fide Plateau citizens with rights to aspire to all political offices.”

You are quite right in saying that it is every bona fide Nigerian citizen's inalienable right to move and settle in any part of the country he or she wishes. However, I would like you to realize that there is a rider to that provision which you quoted elsewhere in your article. That rider is to the effect that that right may be enjoyed only if mobile citizens respect their host communities and also abide by the laws of Nigeria.

In Jos North Local Government Area, respect of the host communities means respecting the traditions and cultures of the Beroms, Anagutas and Afizeres. These nationalities are predominantly Christians while Hausa-Fulanis are mainly Muslims. They also have traditional administrative structures and traditional rulers. By demanding for the removal of the Gbong Gwom Jos and the creation of an emirate council, renaming themselves Jasawas, blocking city centre streets during Friday prayers, siting mosques in predominantly Christian areas, demanding for a district to be curved out of Du District purely for the Hausa-Fulani settlers, quarrelling with the Jos North Local Government Council authorities for relocating the headquarters of the Council in 2009, demanding for the post of Deputy Governor of Plateau State as of right, claiming that the land they bought to built residential houses on illegally is their ancestral possession, imagining that no one owned the land when they arrived Jos around 1930, the Hausa-Fulanis have shown that they do not have an iota of respect for their hosts.

Please note that the Igbos, Urhobos and Yorubas came to Jos along with British tin mining prospectors before the Hausa-Fulanis. Descendants of these people are still here and are very law-abiding. They have never demanded for anything special. They contest for seats in general elections. Many of them are also Muslims. Street names in Jos like Vandapuye, Akpata, Olayiwola and Otunkon bear testimony to this fact.

Recently, one of the settlers tabled a request before the Federal Government’s Abisoye Panel currently sitting at NIPSS Kuru, to the effect that they should be donated the position of Deputy Governor of Plateau State since they have been here for so long. But the Ogbomoshos and Urhobos have been here longer than the Hausa-Fulanis. Do the Hausa-Faulanis have more rights in Nigeria than all other nationalities or what?

I would like you to realize that no tribe in this country has ever demanded for political positions to be allocated to them as of right. Every body contests for these positions in elections. They have also demanded for things like 5 Commissioner positions, LG Council seats, State scholarship for higher education, dual-State citizenship, etc.

I am very sure that the Igbos who have been in Kano for over 50 years still do not and will never qualify for Local Government Chairmanship till. I also believe that a Yoruba man has zero probability of ever becoming a Deputy Governor in Sokoto State. An Ibibio hasn’t the minutest chance of becoming the El-Kanemi of Bornu no matter the longevity of his sojourn in Borno State. I therefore wonder why you are of the opinion that the Hausa-Fulanis of Jos should be treated differently.

Inordinate ambitions, disrespectful demands, feelings of superior ancestry and the like can only annoy others and lead to the sort of crises this country has witnessed in Tafawa Balewa, Ife, Zangon Kataf, Jos, etc. No one has ever successfully taken over the God-given geographical demarcations of any ethnic group in history. Attempts of this have resulted in some of the longest hostilities around the globe. It is the recipe for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and segregations of all sorts.

The Hausa-Fulanis who have settled in Jos will never, never succeed in foisting themselves as rulers over the Beroms, Anagutas and Afizeres. There will be unending crises in Jos North Local Government as long as they do not drop their wicked ambition. Please tell them to save Nigeria the waste of material and human resources.

The solution to the Jos crisis? Abolish the Jos North LG and revert to the old Jos LGA. Alternatively, adjust the southern boundaries of the Jos North to take in parts of Jos South LG so that they Hausa/Fulani tribe never becomes the largest single tribe in Jos North anymore. Ibrahim Babangida’s administration created the present Jos North LG in 1991 without consulting the indigenous tribes and they curved it in such a way as to ensure that the Hausa/Fulanis were almost exclusively the only ones in it. The creation of the Jos North LG was insincere, criminal and intended to give the settler Hausa/Fulanis undue advantage. It amounted to planting a time bomb which exploded within 3 years in 1994 and the fires and deaths have not abated since. Someone should please to help the feuding in Jos.