President Bola Tinubu approved ₦2 billion in relief support for victims of the March 29 attack in Anguwan Rukuba, Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State, after meeting a 32-man delegation from the state on Tuesday evening. The closed-door session lasted about three hours and ended with a pledge from Plateau leaders to renew their commitment to peace.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Mohammed Dorro announced the package as Tinubu pressed the visiting leaders to go home, review past government White Papers on security crises and agree on steps they can actually carry out. The president said the state would be better served by a leadership meeting that includes the living former governors, who were all in the delegation, including the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda.
Tinubu tied the relief approval to a broader demand for order. He told the delegation that if they could identify agents provocateurs, they should name them so they could face the full weight of the law. He also warned that the government would use the instrument of office against troublemakers if they were found, and urged tolerance for every inhabitant in Plateau State. The president said he would pursue state police with the National Assembly as part of a response to insecurity.
Plateau has lived with repeated violence and killings for years, and the president’s decision to ask former governors to work as a committee on the White Paper was an unusual show of unity. The meeting came at a time when killings and abductions have continued in many parts of the country, especially in northern Nigeria, giving the Plateau crisis a wider national weight.
There was also a sharper political edge to Tinubu’s remarks in Abuja on Wednesday, when he said enemies wanted to use insecurity to remove him from office. He said, “I’m a very stubborn politician. I just refuse to go. And I will campaign for my second term.” That turn gave the Plateau meeting a second meaning: the president was not only promising relief, but also drawing a line between security failures and the fight over who controls the country next.
For Plateau leaders, the immediate task is now clear. Tinubu has asked them to return home, summon a leadership meeting and turn the White Paper from a shelved document into a working plan. The ₦2 billion will help victims from March 29, but the test will be whether the state’s leaders can turn that rare roomful of rivals into a durable peace process.
