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I grew up in Jos, Plateau State, watching my parents live in fear, chased in terror by the parents of the very people now responsible for the dastardly acts on the Plateau. Permit me to start this way…
There is a thin line between silence and cowardice; a thin line between defending oneself and murder; and an even thinner one between a peace seeking Muslim and an Islamist jihadist.
To every man who draws breath, there is a purpose, and to everything that has life, there is a greater calling, hence our positioning here on earth.
I identify as a deeply empathetic man, one who refuses to sit back and watch scores of people lose their lives, their property, and their loved ones. I choose to be the man who uses whatever resources and means he has to ensure that the few he can help are actually helped. I refuse to simply exist within a system cruel enough to silence the screams of women who cry daily, women with unaddressed health challenges, women who run for their lives at the break of every dawn.
I have made a decision, to make as much noise as my time here permits, to see that children who grow up without parents, clothing, healthcare, and education are given a chance to achieve their dreams, if they ever find their way back to dreaming at all.
Permit me to ask, as bluntly as possible, what the fvck are we doing? Why is no one reporting these issues? Why is there no proper structure in place to address the onslaught in Miango? Why aren’t there serious cantonments or even armored vehicles patrolling every street, with able bodied military personnel assuring the indigenous people of Miango that they are protected and being fought for?
How was Angwan Rukuba even attacked? If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said that was the last thing I would ever believe could happen. Yet it has, and there seems to be a faction within Plateau State that believes the appropriate response to such barbarity is the imposition of curfews and a few mediocre conference meetings at the state airport, alongside a President who appears too distant to truly empathize with the indigenous people of Plateau State.
People are dying in large numbers. Scores are being displaced in ways no form of humanitarian aid can fully heal. Yet a certain politician, one who should be the voice of the common Plateau man, stood before a public address system and spoke gibberish, framing a crisis he failed to contain as some scheme to sabotage the next election.
To that man, I say this with all due respect, you will not have indigenous people left to vote for your political interests if you do not rise and do the right thing. We are being slaughtered daily, and it is dangerously becoming normal to wake up to such heartbreaking news. Ask the President whether he would have secured the votes he did if he had campaigned only from the state airport. Ask the sitting Governor whether he would have been elected if he had campaigned from inside an armored truck.
The government has failed its people, not just in Miango and Angwan Rukuba, but also in Heipang, Barkin Ladi, Mangu, and other parts of the state. Yet they continue to campaign for office with empty mandates, while their default response to crises remains the same, the almighty curfew.
We are tired of mediocre leadership. Sit up, or make way for those who can.
I grew up here in Jos, Plateau State, watching my parents live in fear, chased in terror by the parents of those who are now the perpetrators of massacres on the Plateau. People are afraid to even call their names. The Islamist jihadist settlers within Plateau State.
This must stop. And we must act, collectively, because our lives depend on the actions we take today, and the future of our children depends on the decisions we make now.
Respect to Islam. But I condemn every Islamic jihadist and those who grant them amnesty.
Wake up, Plateau!!!
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