The trouble with Plateau State

A great political character can be trusted with absolute power only when such character has great qualities and not without. I look at what happened in Jos North, where a non-native is chairman of a local council in a state where three tribes (Berom, Anaguta, and Jarawa) lay claim to the city. In an ideal situation, the natives could sponsor a non-native for political office as a consensus, not as right. If it doesn’t happen anywhere in Nigeria save for Lagos because of its distinctiveness, why Jos?

I hear the next move is to campaign for an Emir of Jos, an emir without constituency to superintend over settlers with no historical context. Some country Nigeria truly is. Now folks from Bauchi and everywhere are in Jos North asking to be given certificate of state of Origin of Plateau State and they dish it out without fail. Soon they will ask for the chance to be deputy governor and governor with the plan to take over the state that belongs to some people, nowhere in northern Nigeria does this happen, except if you share the same faith with settlers.

The political persons here think interests better than rights, idealism, the noble toga which gentlemen latch on to power is missing and many people who are bothered more at this abnormality are even the non-natives. I find this puzzling. The natives seem not to care; the administrator thinks it is cool, he forgets about posterity.

The Jarawa from history begged the Berom people for space in the city because of the persecution they suffered in Bauchi of old, but today the Jarawa would rather side with the Hausa in politics to defeat the Berom, their benefactor and lay claim to some ancestral land in Anaguta.

The youths here want to work but there aren’t governmental programmes to engage their minds. Many have found work in criminality and cultism. Guns in the hands of youths here are scary. I think these guns were procured for religious wars after which benefactors found it difficult to collect the guns, same trajectory with militancy and Boko Haram.

The discrimination in the civil service in Plateau State is shocking. Payment of salaries does not come when it should and the disparity in salary is next to none. The monthly salary of a primary school teacher on grade levels 9, 10, 14, 15 is lower than that of his counterpart in the secondary school. How can teaching be attractive with such discrimination? Some schools here have seventy pupils in one class. How can any teacher teach effectively?

Simon Abah,

Plateau State