It is no longer news that another set of far-reaching recommendations on the ethno-religious crisis in Jos has been submitted to the dust bin of government complacency. That is despite Mr. President’s assurance that he will “not dump (it) like any other one before, but will implement it”. Well said, sir. The jury of the Abisoye panel is still, however, out and might be overtaken by events not unrelated to the permutations of an eminent Goodluck Jonathan presidential candidacy that is progressively jettisoning any Yar’adua commitment perceived to have potholes along the road to the 2011 polls.

The perennial Jos crisis has never lacked sound institutional recommendations on how to combat its permanent mutation. Justice Niki Tobi, Justice Bola Ajibola and the latest, Chief Solomon Lar, panels have all reached the same set of solutions on the way forward from 2001 to date, all nevertheless lacking the same political will for implementation.

The said political will faltered within the supposedly hallowed chambers of the National Assembly when a member’s bill seeking to abolish “indigenization” was hurriedly shot down. The crisis of “indigenization” is not just a Jos problem but a national disgrace. Its sad re-occurrence in Jos is, however, a fallout of a national tragedy. Ironically, that tragedy is developmental.

When in 1967 the cumbersome regional system was unbundled by military decree, the then goliath Northern regional government was transformed into six states, not without a semblance of former cohesion and centrality patched by the Kaduna-based Interim Common Services Agency (ICSA). Nigeria’s first graduate military governor, Joseph Dechi Gomwalk of the then Benue Plateau State, however, progressively opted out of the ICSA behemoth. For Mr. Gomwalk, Radio Television Kaduna, Arewa Construction, SBS Zaria and the New Nigerian newspapers were relics of a monolithic North that had to be replaced with BPRTV, BEPCO, SPS Keffi and the mint condition Nigerian Standard newspapers complete with a Jos version of Kaduna’s “10 Storey” in tow.

As far back as the early 1970s, if any of the six Northern Nigerian states wanted to establish a university, its fledging status would most probably be linked with the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU). Not so with what eventually became University of Jos – it started as a satellite campus of the University of Ibadan.

Jos, in our First Republic politics, was not an NPC stronghold; its political fortunes oscillated between NEPU and UMBC, being the most prominent Northern divisional headquarters beyond the vice-like grip of the Native Authority apparatus. No less a personality as Chief Solomon Lar as the Second Republic governor of Plateau State would bolster his flagging political fortunes by exploiting this progressive link. With the creation of Benue Plateau State on 27 May 1967, Jos, its capital, became to the Middle Belt elite what Kaduna had always been to the now very defunct “Kaduna mafia”.

Joseph Dechi Gomwalk, the senior cop and Chemistry graduate, had indeed fast tracked the deconstruction of dear northern legacies, in the process creating a rival political orbit that would allegedly play a decisive role in terminating the heady months of General Murtala Mohammed’s short-lived regime. The Daily Trust editorial of Monday, 12 July 2010, entitled Jonathan’s Army Day Comments, is another commentary in the continuation of that sad saga.

The battle for the soul of Jos is an extension of the battle for minority supremacy within the diverse Northern political establishment. It is historical and religious. To pretend otherwise is to play ostrich by burying contemporary historical and contending issues in shallow sand.

For Jos to regain its serenity the annals of the 1976 Dimka coup executions have to be revisited in all its legal ramifications. There are those with probable good reason that argue that the rise, short-lived influence and eventual self destruct of  what came to be known as the “Langtang mafia” was enough recompense for whatever military judicial lapses.

Others argue that Mr. Gomwalk, as a well-trained police officer and an Assistant Commissioner at that, would not be as brazen as to be sucked into the vortex of treason. The absence of the proof of an entrenched conspiracy beyond the usual mammy market grudges prior to any coup lends credence to this. The debate however still rages.

The political will to subordinate ethnic and religious identity to national citizenship will not only return permanent peace to the Hill Station but serve as a proving ground for genuine national integration elsewhere where minority rights are still major issues in our polity.

Fifty years after national independence, the North is still afraid of its shadow of wide expanse, teeming but mainly idle population and vast neglected potential. Its legislators killed the indigenization bill, its towns and cities are still demarcated along mainly ethnic and religious fault lines and systematic discrimination has been elevated to a veritable instrument of nepotistic statecraft.

The minority Hausa-Fulani and motley of other Northern minority Muslims in Jos, as Nigerians, have every right of equal citizenship and full representation there. Just as every other Nigerian in a Hausa-Fulani Muslim-dominated state, town or city has every right to self actualization and the pursuit of happiness.

Mutual tolerance is actually a two-way street; after all, one man’s majority is another man’s minority.

Yahaya Joe wrote from 53 France Road, Kano, and can be reached at: ahyajoe.gmail.com