Lagos — When will Plateau State be in the news for the right reasons? When will the orgy of killings stop in this part of Nigeria? Has Jos become accepted as Nigeria's version of the once notorious killing fields of Uganda's Luwero Triangle? Has human life becomes so cheap that it is worth nothing anymore on this Plateau that prides itself as the home of hospitality and tourism? When will this recurring human wastage and carnage on the Plateau become a thing of the past?

My heart bleeds for this nation. Or contraption called Nigeria? Why have some senseless people always made it a point of duty to kill innocent citizens and shatter the peace of the nation in the name of religion?

Within the last ten years, the city of Jos in particular and other parts of Plateau State have recorded several ethno-religious clashes resulting in huge loss of precious lives and property. This is not discounting the bloody clashes that took place in 1994 and 1997.

In September 2001, over 1000 people perished in the rioting that broke out in the State. The crisis erupted again in 2004 with Moslems and Christians taking up arms against one another. In that clash, over 700 lives were lost.

The State erupted into yet another bloody conflagration in November 2008, just barely a year ago, in which several lives and property worth billions of naira were lost to the mayhem. Among the helpless victims were innocent youth corpers serving in the State who were butchered to death. Over 500 innocent souls who were caught in the unending crisis were dispatched to the great beyond.

And today, the Plateau has gone up in flames with the attendant huge loss of lives and property even when the traumatized residents of the State were yet to fully recover from the terror visited on them barely a year ago.

The government at either the federal or state level always responded with the setting up of investigative panels of enquiry with proclamations to get to the root of the crises. In deed at the height of the 2004 crisis, a state of emergency was declared on the State.

Following the declaration of emergency, a Sole Administrator in the person of the former Chief of Army Staff, General Chris Ali was appointed for the troubled State. The civilian Governor of the State, Chief Joshua Dariye and his administration were sacked by the Obasanjo-led Federal Government. The emergency period lasted for six months.

From the recurrent crises, it would appear that no useful lessons had been learnt from past experiences. The latest orgy of violence in which more than 500 souls are reported to have been killed for no justifiable reasons is not only disturbing but questions our pretence to being a united country with a common destiny.

The vicious and hate killings in Jos which take on the coloration of ethnicity and religion cannot be rationalized on any grounds. If we love ourselves and share a common destiny as a nation in spite of our diversities, a section of our society cannot wake up any day and begin to levy a war of extermination on sectarian, religious or political considerations.

The gory pictures of deaths and destructions coming from the various theatres of the conflict in Jos appall our sense of being and also diminish our common humanity. It is unbelievable that such level of destructions and waste could be visited on Nigerians by their fellow citizens in a peace time.

Media reports have shown massive destruction to human lives and property, notwithstanding the presence of solders who, on the orders of the Federal Government, have taken over the security of the State. The unprecedented level of destructions, coming even at a time the dust raised by the November 2008 blood bath was yet to settle, defy logic and common sense.

Even though the security agents are doing their level best to contain the situation, the crisis unfortunately escalated to some communities in the hinterlands. A Western news agency, AFP of France, reported that over 150 people were killed and their bodies dumped in shallow wells and pit latrines in what was ostensibly a reprisal action in a village known as Kuru Karama outside the State capital.

With the death tolls mounting, over 18,000 people who narrowly escaped the fighting, according to the Red Cross, are currently seeking refuge in military and police barracks, churches and mosques scattered in different parts of Jos metropolis. It is really disturbing that Nigerians are being turned into refugees in their own country, not on account of any natural disaster or invasion by any external power, but on account of unprovoked aggressions by agent provocateurs in their midst.

The current bloodletting on the Plateau is one too many. It stands condemned before God and man. In this crisis, no one has been spared on the grounds of his ethnicity, religion or political affiliations. Both indigenes and so-called settlers have not been spared. Among the dead are Christians, Moslems and animists.

The sad irony of the situation in Plateau is that every body knows where the problem is coming from, but the authorities at both State and Federal levels appear to lack the requisite political will and determination to deal decisively with it.

The current conflagration was said to have been sparked off by a dispute over an alleged land encroachment by a Moslem who was reportedly rebuilding his house which was burnt down in the 2008 sectarian crisis. He was said to have been challenged by a Christian neighbor on whose plot he allegedly encroached. What a flimsy excuse for the unwarranted carnage and destructions that followed!

The truth is that Jos has become a tinder box, always waiting to explode at the least provocation. The reasons, as many previous public inquiries had shown, are firmly rooted in the competing struggle for land ownership and political control by the Hausa Fulani who are considered as settlers by the Beroms, Anagutas, Afizeres and other tribes indigenous to Plateau.

As at last count, there are over a dozen reports from previous Judicial Commissions of Inquiry on the recurrent sectarian crises on the Plateau with far-reaching recommendations on how to keep and maintain lasting peace in the area. The last of such reports was that of the Justice Bola Ajibola panel which was put together by the State Government to investigate the 2008 mayhem. Even as the Plateau State Government was dragging its feet on the implementation of the recommendations contained in that report, the Major General Emmanuel Abisoye panel set up by the Federal Government on the same 2008 crisis was still sitting in Jos before the present bloodbath erupted.

At the same time action was yet to be taken on the report of the Bayero Nafada-led Ad-Hoc Committee of the House of Representatives that also investigated the 2008 Jos conflicts more than one year after it was tabled on the floor of the House.

Now, the Federal Government has vowed to bring the culprits and organizers of the current mayhem to book as a way to check future occurrences. But nobody is taking the Government seriously because such previous avowals have never been matched with actions.

The culture of impunity which has ensured that none of the culprits in the previous crises had been appropriately punished would seem to have continuously provided the impetus for the serial killings on the Plateau. I believe that with the current disturbances, the time has finally come for a decisive decision to be taken to put this recurrent tragedy on the Plateau to a final stop.

The sponsors of the crises must be fished out and dealt with according to the laws of the land. The culprits are well known. Just like Vice President Goodluck Jonathan said, nobody should hide under the cover of group action to evade justice. Those who engineered and participated in the killings must be identified and made to be answerable for their individual actions no matter how highly placed. This is the only way we may begin to bring sanity into the troubled State.

Government must show determination to address the Plateau problem on a permanent basis. The first step will be to dust up the existing reports of previous judicial panels and take conclusive decisions on them with a view to putting a permanent stop to the recurrent orgies of violence.

Since land ownership and clamor for political control are at the heart of the Jos problem, the Federal and State Governments should look at the possibility of granting self autonomy to the settler communities within the areas they are domiciled in Jos without endangering the power and right of the indigenous people of Plateau to determining the political destiny of their State.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is quite clear on the issues of citizenship and indigene ship. Until the Constitution is amended, the applicable provisions on who is an indigene and citizen cannot be compromised in favor of any group in Plateau. The killings on the Plateau must stop.