4th October, 2018
The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr Solomon Dalung, on Wednesday condemned the renewed killing of innocent citizens in parts of Plateau, and reiterated the call for the declaration of a state of emergency in the area.
Dalung told State House correspondents in Abuja that the resurgence of killings in the state was shameful.
According to him, the declaration of a state of emergency in the area will put a stop to the unwarranted killing of people.
The minister, who is an indigene of Plateau, however, said that when imposed, state of emergency should not involve the disruption of the democratic structure in the state.
“I’m not happy with the resurfacing of killing in Jos considering the fact that I personally played a major role in the restoration of relative peace in the state.
“Gov. Simon Lalong as the leader of the people must summon joint security meeting involving all stakeholders in the state to deliberate on the current insecurity in Plateau state.
“It is also imperative for President Buhari to immediate declare state of emergency by way of deploying military personnel to the troubled local government areas in the state to check the unfortunate incident,’’ he said.
He frowned at those apportioning blame on the federal government over the persistent crisis in the Plateau, saying that President Buhari had taken various security measures aimed at addressing the problem.
The minister, therefore, against politicizing the killing of innocent Nigerians as the federal government was doing all it could to bring the perpetrators of the heinous crime to book.
He added that Nigeria needed peace and stability for the country to progress and achieve meaningful development.
Dalung, who narrated the achievements of the Buhari administration in the past three years, expressed optimism that the President, the sole presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), would record landslide victory in the 2019 election.
He said that President Buhari’s major fault which had continued to attract criticism from his opponents was his ability to expose wrong doings in all spheres of the nation’s socio-economic sector.