The recent announcement by the Plateau State government to convert the Jishe Governor’s Lodge into a palace for the Gbong Gwom Jos, the paramount rule of the Berom people, seems to have revived an old rivalry between the Berom and the Afizere ethnic groups over ownership of the area, popularly known as Tudun Wada.
Since the current Gbong Gwom ascended the throne in 2009, after serving as Comptroller General of Customs, the paramount ruler of the Berom people and the chairman of Plateau State Traditional Council of Chiefs, Da Jacob Gyang Buba, has been without a befitting palace.

For that reason, Governor Jonah Jang felt a man of Gyang Buba’s status deserved the renovated Jishe Governor’s Lodge. The announcement to hand over the lodge came at a time when Jang himself had completed arrangements to move into the over N9 billion masterpiece government house he had built at Little Rayfield in Jos South Local Government Area.

The recent announcement by the Plateau State government to convert the Jishe Governor’s Lodge into a palace for the Gbong Gwom Jos, the paramount rule of the Berom people, seems to have revived an old rivalry between the Berom and the Afizere ethnic groups over ownership of the area, popularly known as Tudun Wada.
Since the current Gbong Gwom ascended the throne in 2009, after serving as Comptroller General of Customs, the paramount ruler of the Berom people and the chairman of Plateau State Traditional Council of Chiefs, Da Jacob Gyang Buba, has been without a befitting palace.

For that reason, Governor Jonah Jang felt a man of Gyang Buba’s status deserved the renovated Jishe Governor’s Lodge. The announcement to hand over the lodge came at a time when Jang himself had completed arrangements to move into the over N9 billion masterpiece government house he had built at Little Rayfield in Jos South Local Government Area.

After a State Executive Council meeting, the governor through the Commissioner of Information and Communication, Barrister Olivia Dazyem, announced that the Plateau State Governor’s Lodge and office at Jishe would henceforth become the palace of the Gbong Gwom Jos and the secretariat of the state’s traditional rulers.

Dazyem said the SEC had received a memo for the movement of the Gbong Gwom’s palace to the present Governor’s Lodge and office, Jishe, because he is the chairman of the state council of chiefs, adding that: “The decision came up after careful assessment of the palace of the Gbong Gwom Jos, where government saw the need to relocate the palace from its present location to the office being vacated by the governor at the Governor’s Lodge, Jishe.”

She stressed that the decision was taken for reasons of convenience and adequate space, as well as considerations for “strengthening of the security of the person of his majesty, the Gbong Gwom Jos, which was threatened,” she said.

However, the announcement to hand over the lodge and offices to the Gbong Gwom had generated controversies from other ethnic groups, particularly the Afizere who are also known as Jarawa tribe in the state.

The area where the Gbong Gwom is to move into became popularly refered to as Jishe in 2010, after the renovation of a former deputy governor’s office, which later turned into the governor’s lodge. Jang had after the renovation named the edifice Jishe Governor’s Lodge, a decision which did not go down well with the Afizere people, who claim to have ancestral ties to the place and that the name Jishe, a Berom word, was imposed on the area to erase the original Afizere name, Gyese.

Before this decision, the state government had in the past battled and faced opposition in its resolve to get the paramount ruler a befitting palace. The Gbong Gwom has since his ascension to the throne spent much of his time at his Du personal residence, only visiting the palace (near Jos North LGA) occasionally for official functions. Historically, the old palace, with a C Division police station and Magistrates’ Courts within its confines, was never intended as a palace but had served as an office of the District Officer (DO).

In a bid to expand the palace in 2007, soon after Governor Jang came to office, the Jos North Local Government secretariat which was situated near the palace along Bauchi Road was relocated to the building housing the Jos Metropolitan Development Board (JMDB), ahead of the 2007 local government council elections. Again, in November 2012, the state government tried again to expand the old palace, when it issued a letter to residents of Farinwata, a street located beside the palace, of government’s intention to send surveyors to survey some selected properties, apparently aimed at making way for the expansion. But the people had resisted, claiming that their homes were not for sale.

Now the government is facing another resistance from the Afizere ethnic group, who have expressed displeasure that they may be gradually losing grips of the area.
The national president of the Afizere Cultural and Community Development Association (ACCDA), Peter Azi Magaji, who spoke with journalist on the rising controversy, said: “there is nothing like Jishe, the name of the area is Gyese, an Afizere ward for dry bamboo trees which once dominated the area.”

Magaji said there was a Supreme Court judgement in their favour which says, the area belongs to the Afizere and the Anaguta ethnic tribes, adding that “even when the state government named the Governor’s Lodge Jishe, we had a press conference where we protested and we sat with security agents and showed them our evidences. We thought that the government is supposed to be a listening government but now again they want to bring the Gbong Gwom to that place and still impose the same name.”

“The government has a right as a policy to place anybody anywhere, we can decide to host the Gbong Gwom Jos in Gyese, but let it be known to the world that we are the ones hosting him, he is a tenant and we are the landlords. That is just what we are saying,” Magaji explained.
According to him, “the government claimed their decision had to do with the Gbong Gwom being chairman of the Plateau State Traditional Council, what happens if another paramount chief becomes the chairman. Are they going to give him another government house?”
Coincidentally, the area in contention also means bamboo trees in Berom language, says the national caretaker President of Berom Youth Movement (BYM), Rwang Dantong. Dantong explained that for anybody to claim that the Supreme Court has granted Jishe to the Affizere was false, adding that they have tax receipts as far back as 1925 indicating the original name of the area to be Jishe.

He explained that: “the Supreme Court judgement was not talking about ownership rather it was talking about political wards. The entire Jishe, Kabong and Laranto were all under Du District before the creation of Jos South. Jishe was under Zawang Ward which is under Du District. But with the creation of Jos South, Jishe became part of Jos North and there were controversies as to where to place Jishe, Jarawa were claiming that it should be placed under Jos-Jarawa ward, while we, the Berom, said it should be placed under Kabong because Jishe and Kabong used to be under Du District.”

According to him, crisis started brewing during the 1993 census, when the materials used for the exercise captured Jishe under Jos-Jarawa, leading to a protest by the Berom people that caused the then military administrator to stop the exercise and set up a panel.
“Da Gwom Du filed a case that government had no right to set up a panel in his land, so it was that case that went up to the Supreme Court and the court ruled that government had a right to set up a panel. So it was left for government to look at the recommendations of the panel and the present government has done that and thrown it away and a white paper has been issued in that respect so for anybody to claim that Supreme Court has granted Jishe for Afizere is false,” the BYM president reiterated.

Magaji also faulted the idea of converting the old palace to a museum, saying: “they had gone to exhume the corpse of the first Gbong Gwom, Rwang Pam, and his successor, Dr. Fom Bot, to be buried in the old palace. Now they want to leave that place as a museum, is it going to be a museum for the bones of the Beroms? Mind you we don’t celebrate graves that are not from our ancestral fathers, it means that that museum is going to be for the Beroms alone.”

While the bickering continues, it has however, gathered from a reliable source that the decision to hand over the governor’s lodge came from some of the traditional rulers in the state who felt the Gbong Gwom deserved a befitting palace and that Jang himself had only reluctantly agreed to the decision.

“The governor reluctantly agreed, it was not Jang’s idea. Instead, the traditional council was the one that brought up the matter,” the source close to one of the traditional rulers in the Central Zone of the state said.

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Trouble continues to brew between Beroms and Afizere over relocation of Gbong Gwom palace to Jishe