Date Published: 02/04/10

NSC: Reforming lasting peace in Plateau State

The ethno religion crisis that engulfed the state had political interpretation. More to the point, the failure of present regime and her party, People Democratic Party (PDP) to act decisively. When Governor Jang came to power he turned his back on the promise he had made. He refused to incorporate in his regime some of those corrupt but active party stakeholders of the state who had been (in his word) “honest”, and refused to spread the patronage of power beyond his own loyal follower.

The result was decamping by some of these members, alienation of the politically conscious middle classes and using of religion as merely cover up by power conscious oriented stakeholders among them as one of the means of achieving their political aims.

Religion in general is more becoming one of the tactical importances for espousing political objectives in the world and this continued to be used by perpetrators in selling their narrative to receptive traditional and radical extremist religion leaders and their followers in return for support.

In these context, religious symbol come to be used as opportunity by some politician to manufacture and secretly construct the crisis in Plateau state to control the populace and get more powerful in projection of their interest. But the persistence reoccurrence of the crisis in the state is now giving rise to a whole new sequence of problems far away from the expectations of the perpetrators which include: merciless retaliation that is creating new generation of radicalized extremist, destroying value of freedom, tolerance and rule of law. More than anything else burning the flames of hatred between tribes and religion communities in the state and vacuum to gain international recognition for support on religion extremism despotism.

The required approach at this stage is the determination of National Security Council (NSC)   to head off the crisis by putting end to the vested interest leading to the reoccurrence of the wholesome incidents through arrangement for effective factual intelligence source with utilization of various previous committee reports and recommendations on how to control religion crisis in the state.

Secondly, establishment of peacetime intelligence coordination for the state and new committee for political, interfaith and tribe dialogue

Ayodele Paul O., ayodelepaulcse@yahoo.com., Osun state, Nigeria.