From Ike Aboyin in Abuja, 03.27.2010

The General Officer Commanding 3rd Armoured Division, Jos, Major General Saleh Maina has there has been no sincere effort by anyone in or outside government to address any of the issues that have turned Plateau State into a conflict zone.

In an interview with this newspaper, Gen. Maina, who made it abundantly clear that he does not want to be dragged into politics or making political statements on Jos, said that the crisis keeps recurring due to the lack of effort to resolve it decisively.

Using the opportunity to provide clarification on the communication received by his officers alerting to the attacks carried out against villagers of Dogo Nahawa, Plateau State on Sunday, March 7, he said “those who should know, know exactly what the problems are or what the causes of the conflicts are.
“And nobody, I repeat, nobody has made any sincere effort to address any of the issues sincerely. That is why the conflict keeps recurring, that is why the crisis keeps occurring.”

The GOC, however, commended Acting Pres-ident Goodluck Jonathan for setting up the Solomon Lar Committee, stating that under the terms of reference, the committee is tasked to identify the problems and advise government on how to resolve the problems.

“Further than that, the committee is to advice the government on how each organ of government, each tier of government as well as related organizations will carry out their roles specifically in solving the problems.
“If that committee does its job properly and the government responds positively, the problems will be solved once and for all,” he stated.

Dismissing reports that made the rounds after the last skirmishes that the governor of Plateau, Jonah Jang notified him of an impending strike which he ignored, Maina said he personally did not receive any communication from the governor or any other party about impending attacks.

“I have been misunderstood, misrepresented and misconstrued by the media which has been apportioning blame on the military over the March 7 incident.
“During my press conference on Thursday, 11th of March, I said the governor did not call me, did not send me any text message neither did any of the government officials on the impending attack on Dogo Nahawa and surrounding villages.

“During the same conference, I stated very clearly that the governor couldn’t have told journalists that he called me because he did not.
“And I referred to his credentials as to why I made that statement - that he was a former governor of two states, he is my retired senior colleague and I am his subordinate.

“Today he is also the chief executive and chief security officer of a whole state in crisis. He knows he didn’t call me, he wouldn’t have said he called me and neither did any of his government officials.
“But I did reveal the text messages that were sent to my officers, not to me, and their contents.

“The Dogo Nahawa attacks took place between 1. 30 a.m. to 2 a.m. in the morning on Sunday and the first message my officers received about Dogo Nahawa was about 3.41 a.m. on that Sunday morning.
“I read those text messages, the three text messages, word for word to journalists.
“But I was very disappointed that all of them, including some sections of the print media, were misconstrued, misunderstood, misrepresented, and they misinformed the public and were apportioning blame on the military.”

The GOC admitted that despite the best effort of the security agencies to maintain law and order in Plateau State, they continue to encounter challenges.
He enumerated the challenges to the operations as inflammatory or inciting statements by those who ought to preach peace especially in the prevailing circumstances.

The second challenge, he said, is[b] the large number of unemployed youths who do not seem to be under any form of authority and who are very ready or willing conduits through which havoc could be caused[/b].
“The third one is rumour mongering especially the very inciting messages that are sent using mobile phones, and the fourth one is the press.”

http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=169558


While the crisis persists, innocent people continue to be killed. We still need a political solution - dialogue, addressing the cause of the problem, unemployment etc


Abusing ourselves on NL WILL NOT end the problem. Justifying attacks on people may even increase the ferocity of future killings. And those will be avoidable deaths. Virtually all crises of this kind in Nigeria were resolved by dialogue, rather than overwhelming military victory. Given the population of Nigeria, no side can win by killing unless that side is prepared to kill tens of millions - even a highly trained and well equipped army will be hard put to achieve that.

And we should stop believing that one side is totally innocent and the other totally culpable. That is against human nature.