Jos crisis: Hausa/Fulani leaders meet Jonathan

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President Goodluck Jonathan?s intervention in the Plateau State ethnic crisis continued on Wednesday night, with a meeting with representatives of the Hausa/Fulani community.

During the meeting, they advised the President to ignore the panels of inquiry commissioned by the state government, and insisted that the Fulanis are indigenes and not settlers in the state.

The meeting, which came two days after representatives of the Berom ethnic group in the state, led by Gbong Gwom Jos, Buba Gyang, held a closed door consultation with Jonathan, started at about 10 p.m. and lasted till the early hours of Thursday.

Emerging from the closed door parley with the President, the leader of the Hausa group and former Minister of State for Information and Communications, Ibrahim Nakande, told journalists that the conflicts affect mainly Jos North and Jos South local governments.

He also said the reports of the commissions of inquiry set up by the Plateau state governments, which the Beroms want implemented, have become obsolete and sub-judiced.

“The discussion was on how best to tackle the crisis in such a way to enhance tolerance, accommodation ad respect for one another, so that at the end of it all the conflicts would have been put behind us,” he explained.

?We also discussed mechanisms which government will help put in place so that each time there are conflicts, ways and means of resolving the conflicts amicably would be used to resolve them.”

Insisting that most of the commissions of inquiry, especially those set up by Plateau government, had lost contemporary relevance, ?Nakande expressed confidence in the commission set up by the Federal Government, “especially the General Abisoye report as well as the Advisory Committee on Jos Crisis, headed by Solomon Lar.”

He disclosed that the government is expected to hold further meetings with other communities that are in conflict in Plateau, ?so that we can jointly find lasting solution to the problem?.

In his own remarks, the head of the Fulani delegation and Protem National Secretary of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders of Nigeria, Sale Bayari, said a chunk of the solution lies in resolving the issues of grazing rights between cattle rearers and farmers in the area, and they had appealed to Jonathan to address that.

Blaming the Plateau State government for not adopting the strategies used by neighbouring states to solve similar conflicts, Bayari declared that the affected Fulanis ?are indigenes of Plateau State, and not settlers, as widely believed.

He said it was important for the Federal Government to intervene, and added that ?for the cattle rearers in Plateau State, especially problem areas like Jos South, Barkin Ladi and Bassa, the Federal Government should try and ensure that the conflicts are resolved because we have the grazing reserves in those areas and there is conflict between cattle rearers and farmers.”

He explained that they had tried to solve the problem like it was done in Benue State where there was similar crisis.

“We are appealing to the governor of Plateau State to copy the governors of Benue, Nasarawa, Taraba, Bauchi and Kaduna states,” Bayari said.

?They succeeded by calling the leadership of the two groups and at the end of the day, the matter was settled. In Plateau State, the problem has been that there is nobody forthcoming either from the traditional institution or the government to say let’s sit and discuss.?

Asked if he was confident that Jonathan would come up with a final solution, he replied: ?Yes, with this presidential intervention, from the way the President has given us time and the way he listened to us like children listening to their father. You know that when you see your father in a pensive mood, you know that the matter must have touched him so much.”

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