The stories of the various crises and riots in Jos are those of hypocrisy and bias. The government has continually been bias/unfair to the victims of the impasse and unfortunately the media have also been complicit. The issue of Jos is simple and clear, the Hausa/Fulani have been on the offensive. There has never been one crisis which started without them premeditating or escalating it. Their agenda has been to take over a land which they know fully well, does not belong to them. Even if ten generations of their forebears were born in Jos that is not enough to give them liberty to declare war on the city and people of Jos. The most appropriate thing to do is to coexist peacefully with the host and other residents. Rather it is their over ambitious and violent expansionist tendencies that have led the indigenes who until now freely gave them their lands to be alarmed. Nigeria is a federal state and every body is free to live and work peacefully in any part of the country, but when a group of people either ethnic or religious fail to harmoniously live with others, then they have lost that freedom. When a group of people continuously kill and maim others, they should be told point blank that their freedom stops where those of others start.

The stories of the various crises and riots in Jos are those of hypocrisy and bias. The government has continually been bias/unfair to the victims of the impasse and unfortunately the media have also been complicit. The issue of Jos is simple and clear, the Hausa/Fulani have been on the offensive. There has never been one crisis which started without them premeditating or escalating it. Their agenda has been to take over a land which they know fully well, does not belong to them. Even if ten generations of their forebears were born in Jos that is not enough to give them liberty to declare war on the city and people of Jos. The most appropriate thing to do is to coexist peacefully with the host and other residents. Rather it is their over ambitious and violent expansionist tendencies that have led the indigenes who until now freely gave them their lands to be alarmed. Nigeria is a federal state and every body is free to live and work peacefully in any part of the country, but when a group of people either ethnic or religious fail to harmoniously live with others, then they have lost that freedom. When a group of people continuously kill and maim others, they should be told point blank that their freedom stops where those of others start.

The largely Christian media has been so scared to report that facts as they are, while their Moslem counterparts are so biased to even fabricate facts in order to continue the war by propaganda. The Moslem media practitioners are as guilty of senseless murders as the religious bigots on the streets. They use their pens and Islamic media like Al-Jezeera to fan and promote hatred by distorting the facts and giving the world this misrepresentation. There have been reports in the media of fake soldiers been arrested or mercenaries imported, but they are not bold to tell us the group these evil people belong too. Everyone knows that no fake soldier or mercenary ever caught happened to be a Christian. How many corps members killed were Moslems? The government has never prosecuted any perpetrator or sponsor of these senseless waves of reoccurring violence. We keep shouting that no religion preaches violence; I agree. But when a certain proportion of a particular religion keeps becoming the vanguard of violence then we must say it as it is. If we must expunge the world Indigene from our national vocabulary why must it start from Jos? Let us start from kano, Sokoto, Maiduguri, Bauchi, Minna and even Katsina. Unfortunately Christians who come from Kano, Bauchi, Kebbi, Sokoto and katsina among others are not even treated as stakeholders in their own states, but the world expects Jos and the people of Jos to be the guinea pigs. Why should it be that the indigenes of Jos are required to give up their ancestral heritage to settlers who very well know their origin?

It is very barbaric to say this last crisis which by all accounts started as a dispute between two people or among a group of people will lead to this monumental loss of lives and property, except to buttress the point that it was well rehearsed and planned out. People argue or disagree every day, why will disagreement over a boundary of land or football game lead to attacking and killing Christians on Sunday morning inside the church? Those of us who come from other local government of Plateau state other than Jos have never lay claims over Jos, there are thousands of southerners and middle belters whose generations too were born and bred in Jos, yet they chose to live peacefully rather than take up arms against their host communities. If the Hausa /Fulani claim to be at war with the indigenes of Jos why then are other Christians and churches always their first targets? If we claim these crises are political what has the Christian who doesn’t belong to any party got to do with the November 2008 crisis over a disputed election which result had not even been announced? Are they saying there are no Christians in ANPP or no Moslems in PDP? If the media cannot report the fact as they are, can they shut up? If the government cannot prosecute the master minds they should spare us all these panels of enquiry.

The Story of Jos is so sad because the people innocently sought to dwell in peace with people from other parts of the country irrespective of ethnicity and religion; only to be rewarded with violence from the Hausa/Fulani who see conquering of Jos as a continuation of the 1804 Jihad. The Federal government is also culpable; in fact the Federal Military Government of Babangida which created Jos North in 1991 had the sole intention of establishing an Islamic Republic of Jos and promoting the interest of the Hausa/Fulani settlers above other residents of the place. This fact accounts for why the vehicle plate number for Jos North is represented by JJN. JJN stands for Jasawan Jos North; Jasawa is the identity of the Hausas in Jos. No other local government in Nigeria has its plate number represented by the identity of a segment of the people albeit settlers. It is easy to remove the Christian governor of Plateau and still call for the removal of another while the Moslem governors of Bauchi and Borno; and other Moslem dominated states which have similar histories of skirmishes remain in office. It is easier to call for a state out of the present plateau state to meet the selfish demand of a minority Hausa population but impossible to give the predominantly Christian population of southern Kaduna their own state ,despite their inability to produce a governor in their own state.

As much as we desire peace in Jos, hypocrisy must give way to the truth. Peace without Justice is only but an illusion. Equity rather than equality is the bedrock of Justice. You can’t be talking of equal right which will only please a minority but against the right of the majority and owners of Jos and you say Justice will be done? Justice is defending the citizens irrespective of religion but it is also saying the truth. We can’t have justice when we are biased, hypocrites or cowards. Justice for the Jos indigenes means that we respect them and accept the fact that whether we come from other parts of plateau state or from outside the state, Jos belongs to the indigenes and we must live peacefully with them or leave peacefully without endangering the lives of others. Lack of sincerity on the part of our leaders has lead to the balkanization of Jos into the Christian Jos and the Moslem Jos. We all have our towns and villages to go back to but the indigenes of Jos have only Jos and this same Jos has been destroyed. The indigenes have been killed and maimed in their own villages and this time around; as far as Bukuru and Anguldi and the world still accuses them of genocide against the very Hausas who are the war mongers? Hypocrisy is condemning Israel for occupying the lands of the Palestinians but encouraging the Hausa settlers in Jos to become the overlords of the owners of the land. Shame on hypocrites and cowards!

Note.

This article was written and first published after the Jan 17th 2010 crisis which marks three years today. Unfortunately that 2010 crisis has spiralled beyond the traditional theatre of war till date.

Note: the opinions expressed here-in are solely those of the writer and do not represent the views of viewpointnigeria.

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Hypocrisy and the balkanisation of Jos – by Samuel Stephen-Wakdok