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Following the controversies and doubts
that have trailed the operational profile of men of the Special Task
Force on peace keeping in Jos, the team is now to be changed every
three months, Plateau State governor, Jonah David Jang said on Thursday.

Speaking at the new
governor’s lodge and office, Jishe when he received the national
leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) who paid a
commiserating visit on him. Mr Jang explained that the decision was
made during a special emergency meeting with Vice-President, Namadi
Sambo.

The emergency
meeting with Mr Sambo last week in Abuja, had the three governors of
Plateau, Bauchi, and Borno states receiving “marching orders” to halt
the security drift in their states and ensure a peaceful atmosphere as
the April elections approach.

According to Mr
Jang, his administration is determined to restore peace in the state.
Thus, he said, it is evolving a holistic programme to engage the
various demographic categories of the state’s rural and urban
population so as to divert their energies to creative and more
constructive engagements.

He said this
programme includes ventilating the employment atmosphere in the state
so as to keep the youth gainfully employed and make them contributors
to the national gross domestic product.

Mr Jang revealed
that already, the government has purchased tricycles to be given out to
youth on a hire purchase basis, an arrangement, which he said was
conceived to phase out motor cycle transportation in the state because
of the latter’s vulnerability to harbouring miscreants that have been
accused of being accomplices in the perpetration of sectarian crisis in
the state.

Jonathan’s effort

In his remarks to
the CAN leadership led by its national president, Ayo Oritsejafor, Mr
Jang said that President Goodluck Jonathan has already approved a
community policing proposal submitted to him by the Plateau State
government.

By that
arrangement, he said, apart from Operation Rainbow which is an ad hoc
rapid response arm of the STF, the police are to train a special group
of vigilante youth to be kitted by the state for effective
village-to-village and cross-border monitoring.

Responding, Mr
Oritsejafor, who also had the General overseer of the Redeemed Church
of God, Enoch Adeboye on his entourage, said what has been happening in
Plateau State of recent is most unfortunate, and that CAN had to put
its national conference in Abuja on hold to enable the leadership visit
Jos because of the impact of these negative developments on Plateau
State and the entire nation.

Mr Oritsejafor expressed hope that the visit will mark the end of
the recurrent crises in Jos, and also challenged the Federal Government
to muster the will to uncover and punish those behind the crisis and
bring to an end what is fast turning into a culture of madness and
cannibalism.