Plateau Killings: Attacked Communities Back Lalong’s Call against Land Grabbing

Communities recently attacked in Barkin Ladi, Riyom, Jos North and Jos South Local Government Areas of Plateaui State, where over 200 persons were killed by suspected herders, have thrown their weight behind Governor Simon Lalong’s call against land grabbing, vowing not to abandon their ancestrial lands for the attackers who are hell bent on displacing them.

This is even as Plateau elites, comprising scholars and researchers in the states, have decried the politicisation of the attacks, lamenting that rather than uniting to form a common front against external forces bedeviling the state, politicians have hijacked the crisis for cheap personal gains.

Addressing journalists in Jos, APC leaders of the affected communities led by Architect Pam Dung Gyang however frowned on the mobiolisation of people from diverse shades under whatever guise to perpetrate crime and engage in lawlessness like forceful invasion of Government House and attack on the Governor, who was on a huimanitarian visit.

“Violence has never been an acceptable way of conflict resolution and it contravenes all known human conventions; therefore we call on relevant government agencies to ensure that those who are culpable in disturbing the peace of the land are made to face the maximum punitive measures prescribed by the extant laws so as to send a strong warning to anyone who may be wickedly misled to tow this path of savagery in future.

“We painfully consider ourselves as victims of the same circumstances but what these trying times encourage is that we find solace in ourselves as being partners in progress of the Plateau project. Sadly, we notice a veiled threat to this unity by words and utterances of a certain group of people who have chosen to misrepresent the facts of the remote and immediate causes of these unfortunate happenings by rather giving it an ethnic coloration all in an attempt to ostracise these three local governments and deny them the opportunity for a continued political participation.