Lagos, February 05: The Nigerian government has formed a 15-man panel to proffer solution to the ethnic conflict in the central city of Jos and come up with practical recommendations.
“We have a mandate to dig deep into the roots of this crisis and come up with practical solutions out of it,” Solomon Lar, the committee chairman, told.
Dismissing the Jos mayhem an “embarrassment that must be stopped,” Vice President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday established the panel after a stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja, the country’s capital.
He named Lar, a Christian native of Jos, the Plateau State capital, as chairman and Ambassador Yahaya Kwande, a Muslim, as co-chair.
The decision followed the January ethno-religious and political strive during which over 500 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.
Lar the panel’s mandate includes, but not limited to, critical examination of knotty areas of the relationship between the indigenes and the settlers as well as political undercurrents of the fighting.
“We are asked to, among other terms of reference, critically examine the issues surrounding the recurrent violence in Plateau State and work out how various institutions and levels of government can interact to ensure that the crisis is resolved once and for all,” he said.
“This will involve us calling together all the stakeholders and getting them to say how best to live in peace and harmony.”
Lar said the panel would be fair to all parties, whether indigenes or settlers, and reiterated that the Jos crisis may have been fuelled by “weak politicians” hiding under religion and ethnicity.
Reconciliation
Ambassador Kwande, the co-chairman, said the panel will start its work “as soon as possible.”
He said no deadline has been given for the committee to conclude its work.
Jang said the panel would call for memoranda from all stakeholders but would avoid allocating blames.
“You should know that this panel is about reconciliation and this is what we hope to achieve,” he stressed.
“It is not about trading blames about who started what. We will ask stakeholders to limit themselves to proffering solutions to the incessant uprising in Jos.
“We will give everybody equal opportunity to say their minds.”
Nigeria has a history of ethno-religious strive, such as the Maitatsine, the Boko Haram, Kala-Kato and the Jos indigene-settler syndrome mayhems in the North, Onitsha ethnic killings in the East, and Yoruba-Hausa clashes in the Southwestern part.
Several committees had been set up in the past to address these crises, but their reports are often not implemented.
The vice president acknowledged this laxity during the Abuja meeting, and said dialogue and mutual respect appeared the best way out of the many crises rocking Africa’s most populous country.
“We cannot allow Plateau to get to the level where some people want to push us.
“The talk is to discuss on the way forward to have a solid position so that such things don’t happen again.”
-Agencies