Lagos — The recent report of the discovery of a lost tribe in Taraba State has a certain significance that is lost on many people. That must have caused the poor attention given the news item. The discovery is an indication of the failure of the local government system in the country. Its much touted strong point of bringing development closer to the people has fallen flat on its face in the case of the Jibu people of Gashaka Council Area of Taraba State. That a people could be so shut out of civilization with all the modern ICT facilities and especially the multi-billion naira aerial satellite-mapping project of the Federal Government is also worrisome.

The mountain-dwelling Jibu people were recently "discovered" by a Christian missionary group, the Mission Light House, Wukari. Totally cut off from the rest of the world, they literally live in the Stone Age with its attendant primitivism. They apparently know nothing about the most basic index of modernity - clothing - as they mostly go about stark naked. Fresh leaves serve as scanty covering for their nudity. The Jibu people are neither Muslims nor Christians, as they still hold tenaciously to traditional worship. Their living condition is said to be worse than that of the Koma people. With no access road, they are said to drink water from the same streams also used by animals.

We commend the awareness created by the missionary group.

Historically, the Jibu people were said to have lived together with their brothers in the old Kwararafa Kingdom until about 1807 when the Fulani Jihadists invaded the kingdom. They subsequently ran to the mountaintop where they have since lived, completely cut off from other tribes. Not even the activities of the colonial masters had any impact on them, largely due to the difficult terrain of their new abode.

The story of the Jibu people is certainly a grave indictment on the Taraba State and the Gashaka local governments that are supposed to exercise some form of administrative jurisdiction over the area.

Were state and local governments in the country to depend on internally generated revenues for most of their operations rather than on revenue handouts from the central government, they would probably have been more concerned about the welfare of their people and would not, on any account, allow any part of their territory "get missing". And the people too would feel duty-bound to take the government, to whom they pay so much in taxation, to task on issues of social welfare facilities and infrastructural development. In other words, the plight of the Jibu people would not have arisen if a functional government, in its true sense, is in place.

Also, it is strange that with the numerous national enumeration exercises carried out in the past and the aerial satellite mapping on which huge sums of money have been spent, some Nigerian communities could still be left unnoticed in the national map for so many years.

But having been discovered, the "lost" Jibu people require to be reintegrated into our modern world. We therefore, call on the federal and Taraba state governments to send experts to the place to find out their immediate needs and device a practicable and sustainable means of reintegrating them into modern Nigeria.

Surely, the Jibu story may be useful to anthropologists, but it is a clarion call on all tiers of government in the country to be more alive to their duties of developing their areas and providing social amenities to the people. This cannot be effectively done unless the governments have adequate knowledge of who lives where in their respective areas of jurisdiction. If governments at all levels make concrete efforts to open up the rural areas and desist from concentrating developments in the urban centres, incidents of Jibu would be reduced in the country.

There is also the possibility of other 'lost tribes' in other states of the federation. Efforts should be made to "discover" them too and open up their primitive abodes to modernity.