Plateau Crises: Reps Ad-hoc C’ttee Meets Dariye, To Engage All Stakeholders
By Balarabe Alkassim, Abuja
The House of Representatives Special Ad-hoc Committee on Plateau crises has paid a courtesy visit to the former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye at his residence in Abuja.
The visit was preparatory to the stakeholders engagements as part of the Committee’s mandate to meet with stakeholders in order to find ways of resolving the lingering crises in many parts of Plateau State which have over the years led to loss of lives and properties.
Speaking, the chairman of the committee who is the member representing Agege Federal constituency of Lagos State, Hon. Wale Ahmed, said, the House under the leadership of its Speaker, Abbas Tajuddeen, consider it necessary and set up the special committee, to look into what has been going on in Plateau State and environs for quite a while.
He said, “The security situation, the killings, the violence, you’re to look into them, listen to as many stakeholders as possible and convene a special dialogue, security conference which at the end of the day will be a platform for all concerned to come and openly ventilate, out of which we hope to get the feelings of the people, the root causes of the whole thing.
“So that we are able to proffer a solution to the Federal Government of Nigeria under the able leadership of the president, commander in chief, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is equally concerned, as you know about the situation there.
“Her Excellency, our dear First Lady. has it on good authority and she is also very concerned as mother of the nation.
“As a matter of fact, I am aware of about two or three occasions that she had gone there physically to go and make monetary donations to cushion the effects of some of the occurrences there, to demonstrate to the country and to the whole world that Plateau people are nigerian people and we’re all concerned. So I want to take the opportunity to also commend the first lady of the federal republic of nigeria.
“So we have written, we started this exercise, discharging this responsibility by putting up paper adverts calling for memoranda. We did that in two national newspapers and we have done television adverts, we have done radio adverts especially those television stations and radio stations that are based in plateau states and we have written letters. We have written letters to more than 300 different organisations and individuals to come forward and submit memoranda.
“Quite a number of memoranda have been submitted, we are sifting through to see what people have to say, so that when we start inviting people, we will know what to ask them.
“We are also doing private consultations like this. You have the credit of being the governor of that state in this new democratic dispensation. I am aware of that and we think that makes you a major stakeholder and even a field commander at a stage regarding whatever has been happening there.
“So you will be able to give us as much deeper insight into what the feelings of the people are that lead to these killings, and these are some of the reasons we believe we should pay you a courtesy call and listen to you both in terms of what you know, what you believe, and what the root causes are, including what you think are the various ways to address it,”
Speaking earlier, the former governor, Joshua Dariye, commended the House of Representatives over its efforts to address the lingering crises in Plateau State through extensive stakeholders engagements.
The former hovernor who gave a brief history of the crises during his time as the governor and beyond lamented that the various crises witnessed in the past and at present have affected the state negatively hence the need to address whatever are their root causes.
He said, “This topic is Germaine because it touches the life and the core existence of our people. But it’s a very long topic. Spanning from my time today, it has changed from the hitherto a misunderstanding between communal places to a bigger dimension. We can’t define it.
“During my time briefly, when it started in 2001, it was a boil up from the military to the civilian. People were not able to express their mind. Just one day, somehow, somebody was crossing a prayer point somewhere in, what do you call that place, Cholinyap. And then it just erupted simultaneously. And many, one million people, were asking, ah, just crossing like this, is that a problem, is that a taboo? Even if he breathed in front of God. From there, hell was let loose. Then we managed to control it.
“Then later on, the appointment of the…the indigenes felt that one of them should be appointed, but a non-indigene was appointed, that one also broke into another crisis. And later on Wednesday can’t explain the dimension.
“There were crises in Shendam, there was in Wase and parts of Langtang South between the Tarok and the Fulani on land matters and we tried to mediate and it finally leads us to…we created the chiefdom and other to take care of peculiar interests. In other places we did our best but the crisis lingers.
“At the end of the day, Abuja at that time does not help matters. Because I did raise an alarm very strongly and there was crisis on the Plateau. There were…in Nigeria and some elements on the Plateau. And the then President, Obasanjo Olusegun, said, I am now the Commander In Chief. Of course, he has… the third term on the burner.”
