November 14, (THEWILL) – Since the controversial party congresses that left the Plateau State APC fractured and in disarray, Governor Simon Lalong’s political battles are expanding and extending on all fronts, with the anomaly in the State House of Assembly and injustice he is foisting on Langtang North Local Government Area threatening the peace of the State, writes UKANDI ODEY
Near the Polo Field junction in the heart of Jos North Local Government Area, a two-sided board placed in the middle of the dual carriage way bears an uncanny message, which however consummates a bourgeoning sentiment and diatribe of many people in Plateau: ‘Plateau under siege: Five caliphates, two Judas want to impeach peoples’ speaker.’
Governor Simon Lalong may not be walking a tight rope, but his political noose is tightening gradually with prospects that he could run out of steam as he engages in war in many fronts, with huge cost implications for the people and scarce public resources.
He is not showing any signs of recovery in local opinion polls since the sharp drop he incurred with his poor and non-committal response and handling of the killings in Bassa, which culminated last July and August when villages in Rigweland were wiped out in organised attacks and villagers had to contend with mass burials and destruction of whole farms, as well as a looming food insecurity.
But the governor’s road to these self-effacing battles have been underway since last year when his government appeared to have narrowed down everything about governance to the expediencies and exigencies that came with the global emergency called Covid-19. In the course of that year, he got the State House of Assembly, under the undisputed leadership of Speaker Abok Nuhu Ayuba, to suspend the Chairmen of Kanam and Qua’an Pan Local Government Councils, in circumstances that were as curious as the grounds of charges against the duo were controversial and flux.
In the ensuing days of the ambush against the two chairmen, it became clear that the chairman of Kanam was a mere collateral casualty on the way to the main target in Qua’an Pan, Isaac Kwali, whose profile and guts – some include arrogance – had become detestable and intolerable to Governor Lalong. The succeeding intrigues and power play sorted out the Kanam LGA boss and he was reinstated. But the Chairman of Qua’an Pan, Isaac Kwali’s situation degenerated. The Councilors in the local government council eventually removed him from office and rewarded his deputy by making him the substantive chairman of the council. Although Kwali would proceed to the court, decrying blue political murder, Lalong , no doubt, had won that battle of necessity to demobilise and push him into political oblivion, such that his plans to contest the Plateau South senatorial bye-election could remain anything but a farce. Lalong’s anointed is now representing Plateau South in the Senate.
What goes around comes around, as the hand of time moves. That was how the battleground shifted, this time to the door step of the then state Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Leteb Dabang, reputed by his peers and associates as a ‘masquerade’.
Having put in more than four years as chairman of the party, Dabang had erected his own political structures and followership, appearing dangerous and menacing on the way to 2023. The local government elections were approaching by last Octobe, and the earlier the better it was to cut Leteb to size and whittle down his influence within the party. Instances of altercation and loud, unfriendly exchanges were reported between Gov Lalong and Leteb, especially as it had to do with delegates and the mode of party primaries to choose the chairmanship and councillorship delegates. Lalong again pulled a sucker punch here – an upper cut, and Leteb was down and out, while the governor coasted home to victory by emasculating the entire state APC and reducing it to a fiefdom.
With Leteb taken down, the battle changed gear and the Enfante Terrible entered cruising mode, with his foot soldiers, stooges, and moles dominating the rungs of the party’s ladder.
This was also the beginning of internal bleeding in the party. The flounder and decay of its internal organs were not far away as internal democracy exited the party. The eventual party congresses to elect councillorship and chairmanship candidates were a sham and at best the orchestration of a dictatorship.
The congresses were bungled by Government House. They did not really take place in the various local government areas. All the governor’s candidates emerged by ‘consensus’. Aggrieved members and aspirants are ruing or, like the Langtang North aspirant, they are in court in the quest for justice. The Party bleeds, but Lalong won.
If the injustice of the chairmanship and councillorship primaries was small and decried by only the affected few, the opportunity of the state elective congresses were one in which Lalong performed the undertaker’s role for the APC in Plateau State. Aspirants to the various offices, including those who paid to purchase nomination forms, did not get to see the forms. The entire process was bungled by the governor and leader of the party.
Reports say ‘consensus’ candidates emerged from a list endorsed by Governor Lalong – as a matter of fact, their nomination forms were filled the Monday after they had been affirmed as members of the State Working Committee on Saturday. It was another sweet victory for Lalong, except that this one came with critical corollaries rich in the propensity to drain the party. A parallel APC in the state is a living exemple.
The conduct of the local government elections was a major battle waged by Lalong against the people and the state. The elections were programmed from the APC primaries to the secondary elections in which the main opposition party, the PDP, dreaded by Lalong who was scared by field reports indicating that the party’s overwhelming popularity and acceptability, did not participate. Eventually, Lalong’s APC had a false walk over, in what critics and commentators have put down as the most embarrassing and compromised political exercise using public resources. Momentarily, Lalong won this time what looks like a pyrrhic victory against his people to the amusement of his oppressive gallery.
It is a victory, however, that may have been ambushed by the law and the long hand of justice. The PDP in the state is in the Appeal Court to review the decision of a High Court that excluded it from the elections.
On the eve of the elections on October 8, a long drawn legal engagement between the PLASIEC and PDP lawyers generated such apathy that grated on the mood and response of the people to the elections the next day. The PDP appeal is yet to be determined; which translates also that the fate of the elections as held on October 9 is suspect and hanging on a balance of probabilities.
Yet, Lalong appears to be warring where war and battle are either unnecessary or avoidable. The battleground this time is Langtang North where the Governor is superintending over a forgery and travesty of democracy.
The tenure of the elected chairman of the council is due to expire on October 9, 2022. In a brazen demonstration of power and arrogance, PLASIEC went ahead and conducted elections for the chairman’s seat when the vacancy did not exist. The current chairman, Joshua Ubandoma Laven, challenged the PLASIEC in court.
In his judgment, Justice Ishaku Kunda described PLASIEC’s decision to hold elections in Langtang North last October 9 as “rascally’, knowing that there was no vacancy existing there until October 9, 2022. Accordingly, Ishaku entered a declarative judgment in favour of Ubandoma of the PDP, and warned the APC mistaken candidate not to parade himself as Chairman of Langtang North local Government Council. Used to ‘winning’ battles, Lalong, a lawyer, is encouraging aberration in Langtang North by enabling his APC candidate to flout the rule of law and obstruct the course of justice, including engaging touts and thugs to violently overthrow Ubandoma.
The Lalong battle that has put the state and its sensibilities on the edge is the subsisting debacle in the State House of Assembly, which was initiated when seven out of 24 members met during unofficial hours and ‘impeached’ the Speaker, Abok Nuhu Ayuba with the support and enablement of Government House.
For the Third week now the House of Assembly complex is under security lock while the members are split along two lines – one loyal to the Speaker Abok and the other subservient to Lalong. It was one crisis that is really threatening the peace and continuity of the state and the greater danger being that except the governor puts the interest of the people and the state above his own, there is no end in sight.
With Plateau elders departing him and keeping a studied distance, the reverberating question in public places in the state is ‘whatever is the size of his war chest, is it a legacy of crises he wants to bequeath to the state?
