By EZEKIEL DONTINNA
AN erudite public speaker and human rights activist, popularly known as the “People’s Professor”, Comrade Luka Pampe, has berated the Plateau Youth Council (PYC),.
He charged them to brace up and unite all other ethnic youth associations under one umbrella towards a common positive front.
He gave the charge Saturday, while delivering his keynote address as guest speaker at a one day summit on peace and security with the title: “Redefining Plateau Youths Participation in Stemming the Tides of Community Attacks in Local Governments and Surveillance Strategies”, held at the Azi Nyako Youth Centre, Dadin-Kowa, Jos, the state capital.
The Public Speaker said there was a need for the youths to adopt a consensus building strategy that would bring to an end issues that have been bottled up in the hearts of communities through a round table to reconcile issues. Pamper pointed out that death has no political party, hence the need for them to unite towards a common positive front.
He expressed worries that the crisis on the Plateau has since been an age long phenomenon because the root causes and factors provoking it has been more of economic struggles, but later snowballed into a political crisis, leading to fighting themselves. This created room for their enemies to take advantage of the cracks.
While commending the convener of the summit, Pampe called on Plateau stakeholders to stop playing politics with recruitment of ‘Operation Rainbow’ personnel, advising them to employ those with human Intelligence and surveillance strategies where counterintelligence could be imputed in arresting the unabated attacks on Plateau communities.
He, therefore, challenged the leadership of the PYC, being the umbrella body of all other youth associations, to brace up and take control of coordinating these sectional ethnic youths groups to deal these series of attacks and should not leave only the affected ethnic youth associations to face the enemies.
On his part, the convener of the summit, who is also the PYC Publicity Secretary, Comrade Walshak Kumwen, commended the guest speaker for doing justice to the topic, disclosing that, “statistics shows that majority of those apprehended as suspects during unrest are youths. As young people, we have a huge role to play as far as peace is concerned in the state,” he advised.
“So, I felt it is important for us as the umbrella body of all the youths on the Plateau to be able to bring the youths together to discuss the way forward, because if we agree as young people that we will stay in peace, I assure you that we will stay in peace, but if we do not agree, we will not.
“We are going to be tactically implementing the resolutions that have been reached at this very important summit.”,
Meanwhile, the Speaker, Plateau State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Gabriel K. Dewan, accompanied by the Chairman, House Committee on Youth Matters, Hon. Joseph Gokum, called for unity of purpose among the youths and that they should continue to pray for President Bola Tinubu and Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State.
