By Marie-Therese Nanlong

In order to alleviate the sufferings of people displaced recently in some communities in Plateau State, an indigenous group, Plateau Our Heritage, POH has donated relief materials to the survivors with a charge on them not to lose hope in God.

The three benefiting communities; Kum in Riyom, Yelwan Zangam in Jos North and Jebbu Miango in Bassa local government areas were recently attacked by armed men and their inhabitants displaced.

To provide some succor, POH provided some bags of grains and other foodstuffs to reduce the spate of hunger which is facing the people.   

Speaking while donating the items, Chairman of POH, Alex Kwapnoe lamented the level of killings of persons and destructions of property and farmlands in communities in the State and urged the State government to urgently reinvent the State-owned security outfit, Operation Rainbow, make it functional to respond to distress calls before communities are attacked.

Kwapnoe wondered why attacks are always successfully carried out even when there are alerts about impending attacks in communities and stated, “Government must step up efforts and be proactive because attacks are carried out by terrorists and the aim is to acquire ancestral lands of the people who are helpless. There are legal means of acquiring lands, people should not be allowed to acquire lands by force.

“What we have here is just palliative to assist the people, we have called on the government in the past that community efforts should be encouraged, rather than government being reactive, government can be proactive and institute means of quelling these attacks because all these attacks are known before they happen, news filters around that such things will happen. The life of every Plateau man is sacrosanct, the killings by terrorists must not be allowed to continue, these people are no longer ordinary herdsmen, they are terrorists and must so be defined.”

Earlier, POH Convener, Ayuba Pam explained the aim of the group, among other things is to protect the heritage of the State and project same to the outside world, and urged the beneficiaries to see the gesture as a brotherly one stressing, “It can’t take away hunger in the land but it is symbolic and shows that we are brothers faced with a war attrition.”

Responding on behalf of the benefiting communities, the President of Irigwe Development Association, Robert Ashi described the gesture as a blessing and promised to deliver the donated items to those directly affected.

He lamented that hunger is ravaging communities because people could not go to farms for fear of being killed and prayed that God would have mercy and deliver the State from the incessant attacks.