Contemporary Issues of Peace and Security in Plateau State, Nigeria: The Traditional and Political Perspectives
Keywords:
Peace, Plateau State, traditional security and political securityAbstract
This work examines contemporary challenges to peace and security in Plateau State. It argues that the intractable and internecine conflict dynamics reflects a constant clash between the traditional and human conceptions of security. The clash is made possible by Nigeria’s historical experiences in colonial and military dictatorships, which sustained the deployment of military hardware in State responsiveness to every conflict situations. In interpreting these scenarios, the work deploys classical historical, analytical and comparative research methods. The conception of security in post world war era was anchored on the protection and preservation of the State’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and the regime in power. This trend however changes at the end of cold war to the protection and preservation of the national, who now becomes the primary unit of analysis and who is meant to live under socio-economic and political conditions that seek to guarantee the twin values of freedom from fear and freedom from want. It concludes that the zero-sum and militarist-driven approach may fail to address the historical, political, and socio-economic roots of conflict on the Plateau.
References
The deployment of military in the Plateau conflicts has taken ethno –religious coloration with the Muslims Hausa-Fulani are supportive of a Muslim GOC-Rukuba, State Commissioner of Police, STF Commandant or the Head of the Police College. Conversely, the Christian indigenes are supportive of a Christian occupant to those offices. Therefore, the accusations and calls for or against the posting of these state officials and in the deployment or otherwise of security forces has always been informed by ethno-religious considerations.
Constitution of Panels of Inquiry have been subject of contestations between the competing interests, with Muslim Hausa/Fulani preferring FG’s interventions, while Christian indigenes going with the state government. A case in point was when FG under President
YarAdua inaugurated the Abisoye’s Panel and the State Government inaugurated the Ajibola Panel to look into the November, 2008 conflict.
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