Commissioner of Information for Plateau State, Musa Ibrahim Ashoms, has questioned why certain persons have chosen to politicize and look down on the efforts of the first Lady of Nigeria, Oluremi Tinubu’s efforts to alleviate the suffering of the suffering of the citizens of Plateau.
On Wednesday, Remi Tinubu made a donation of 500 Million Naira to 500 families affected by the Plateau crisis across 6 LG affected by the crisis under her Renewed Hope Initiative (RHI). However, controversies arose after the Jama’atu Nasril Islam community claimed that the listing was done in bias and sentiments making it lopsided.
In an ARISE NEWS interview on Friday, Ashoms commended the first lady describing her as a politically educated ‘Mother of the Nation’ despite Plateau being a PDP dominated state. He also stated that Nay sayers should have aired points better rather than bringing religion into the matter and being “malicious and unkind to the government”.
According to “We would have preferred that Plateau be peaceful so that nobody will have to give us money. But in the event that it has happened what we did was that communities that were affected were asked to submit names. And you will know that it is not the same in every community. There are communities that have passed through this problem over and over again.
These names emanated from the communities that were affected and in writing these names, we didn’t provide people based on political linen religion or any affiliation. But it is quite appalling and disheartening that this issue is coming up now.
‘This is Renewed Hope Initiative, an initiative of the first lady of the federal republic of Nigeria towards ameliorating the sufferings of the people of the plateau. It’s quite unfortunate and excruciatingly sad that people will begin to make political capital out of this benevolence.”
The commissioner stated that the names of persons gathered for the donation was done through the aid of gatekeepers and leaders to identify affected families who needed it the most.
“Every community has gatekeepers. The names were published and if you check they are plateau sons and daughters affected by this problem and they belong to communities that were affected.” a bank draft was created.
“Our Governor himself has gone to meet the president to lay bare the issues of the plateau. The pogrum and ethnic cleansing going on. And that is why the chief of army staff, General Lagbaja was in Mangu LGA where we formed the operation Hakorin Damisa. And you can see that the thing has gone down relatively. Our hope and our prayer is that people don’t just wake up and begin to kill their neighbours.” He further emphasised that the people of the state only want peace so as to allow them to go about their business.
He made known the certain initiatives taken by the state government to aid the people. “In the interest of our people, we have cultivated 900 hectors of land, so that we will cushion the effect and we have set up a committee to begin to implement a cost of living allowance, so we can reduce the stress and alleviate the suffering that people are going through.
“For those that know how to get Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles, the queue for it is long and we are hoping to get them into plateau state so our people will have a wonderful transport system. So we can convey them from point a to b. It will also help in tracking who enters the buses.
“Again, scholarship on the plateau has been very meagre for a long time. Government is benevolent in it’s thinking and has now raised it by 100%. we have reduced school fees by 50% in all state and government owned main institutions.”
Glamour Adah
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