September 05, (THEWILL) – “We call on Gov. Simon Bako Lalong to come up with a statement defending us as a people and to bring back renewed commitment to the cause of Plateau. We strongly call on Plateau people to practically stand up and defend themselves and their communities, as the conventional security design is no longer guaranteeing our safety as a people.”
The above statement is contained in the Resolution of the Plateau House of Assembly on Friday, August 27, 2021, giving Governor Simon Bako Lalong a two-week ultimatum to address the security challenges bedeviling the state. This bold move, which could be considered a critical juncture, underscores media reports and allegations of ineptitude and indifference on the part of the governor in tackling the worsening insecurity in Plateau.
The lawmakers have taken the step to tackle the seeming ‘vacuum’ in the political leadership of the state where inaction had held sway. It is a decisive step that should provide momentary relief, at least, to the despondent people of Plateau and recover the ship of the state sailing adrift on a rudderless voyage. They want the governor to act and to be seen as taking action.
Plateau has witnessed a bloodbath recently triggered by the killing of about 60 innocent persons in two separate incidents within 10 days in Jos, the state capital.
First was the killing of 25 persons said to be travelling to Ondo State from Bauchi on Saturday, August 14, around the Gada-Biyu–Rukuba Road area in Jos. This was followed by the gruesome massacre in Yelwa Zangam community, Jos North Local Government Area barely 10 days after. Not less than 35 persons were reportedly killed in the incident said to have been methodically executed in the night. The state is now tension-soaked as fears of further attacks heighten.
Plateau is no stranger to communal crisis and the people are no less acquainted with the grief it generates. Over the years, the residents have witnessed an unyielding crisis with a huge loss of lives and wanton destruction of properties. Efforts to resolve the age-long crisis have often failed to achieve the desired result. More disturbing is the fact that the coming of the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government which rode to power on the change mantra, and a vow to tackle insecurity, has not brought a change. Rather, the situation has become amazingly worse.
Unfortunately, too, Plateau now has a governor, Simon Bako Lalong, whose commitment to achieve peace in the state has, allegedly, gone on a vacation. It may not be out of place here to say that the governor, who is also the Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, has brought despair and disappointment during his six-year reign.
The paradox in this narrative is that the 58-year-old legal practitioner is not in the three categories of northern governors that insecurity has created: Those who are passionately committed to fighting insecurity in their domain, though amid obvious hindrances; the league of hypocritical and pretending governors and the confused group. Lalong is incubating in his own nest. He is deeply occupied with one and half priorities – how to please President Muhammadu Buhari and how to advance in the game of golf (the half).
FLASH BACK
Recall the incident of Friday, January 4, 2019 where Gov Lalong hosted APC chieftains led by its erstwhile chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, at the Rwang Pam Township Stadium in Jos. The event was to officially present Lalong with the party’s flag to contest the governorship election in the state for the second term. Lalong stunned the world when he declared, in clear and unambiguous words, that he would die for Buhari. It was a story that dominated the newspaper banner headlines the next day and for some time: “I will die for Buhari.”
Gov Lalong had explained to the audience why he would not hesitate to die for President Buhari: “People asked why I was dying for Buhari and I told them that I will die for Buhari because he is my helper. He has helped in addressing insecurity in Plateau and gave us bail-out to clear workers’ salaries. There is nothing more than that; he will win in Plateau, far better than 2015.”
But Lalong failed to deliver Plateau to Buhari. Based on the result published by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Lalong’s major opposition contender, scored 548,665 votes as against Buhari’s 468,555 in Plateau in the 2019 presidential election. Atiku also won in 11 local government areas to defeat Buhari who won in only six LGAs of the state. Atiku beat Buhari with 80,110 votes.
Buhari had also failed to win in Plateau in the 2015 presidential election. He won a total of 429,140 votes as against 549,615 votes polled by his PDP rival, then President Goodluck Jonathan, a difference of 120,475 votes. So, Plateau people never wanted Buhari or APC. But Gov. Lalong was neck deep in his love for Buhari which apparently led to his alleged ambivalence in tackling the Plateau crisis as the head of the government.
Recall also that President Buhari had visited Plateau earlier in March 2018 amid a crisis that consumed many lives under the watch of Lalong. To demonstrate his practical love for President Buhari, the governor renamed the popular Yakubu Gowon Way (named after an illustrious son of the state and Nigeria’s former head of state for nine years) to Muhammdu Buhari Way.
This act drew criticism from some prominent indigenes of the state, such as Mr Solomon Dalung, who was then Minister of Youths and Sports:
“I still insist that the blunder committed by Governor Lalong during the President’s visit was the renaming of Yakubu Gowon Way to Muhammadu Buhari Way. To say the least, it is embarrassing. Gowon was the President’s boss. How can he be stripped of a 40-year-old privilege and honour in his home state? This is the worst thing that can happen to a man like the elder statesman. I believe General Gowon is feeling betrayed and abandoned by his people.
“This is a political decision by Lalong desperately taken to secure his 2019 ambition, but not the decision of Plateau people. We condemn this act with all sense of love for Yakubu Gowon as a father, while advising Governor Lalong to rescind this unpatriotic decision and publicly apologise to Gowon and the President for embarrassing them.
Dalong then reminded Lalong that the state was awash with blood and that his personal ambition should not override the need to safeguard the lives and properties of the people where killing had persisted.
“If the visit of the President was intended to secure 2019 for Lalong, it has exposed his ambition to risk and multiply his opponents. While re-election is the primary concern of Governor Lalong, fighting, killing and maiming of innocent people continue unabated. No doubt, Plateau is under siege. History is on the verge of repeating itself. We must rise against injustice or else we will all be consumed,” Dalong stated.
SLEEPING EXECUTIVE
Lalong belongs to the All Progressives Congress (APC), the political party that contested for power on the plank of the Change mantra. APC was expected to truly bring a change and lead well. Lalong’s election campaign was robust on the promise of fighting insecurity that has destroyed a once beautiful place.
Plateau was a place that many Nigerians and foreigners loved to visit. Jos was lovely and envied by other parts of the country as a city that God spent extra time to create. But all that has changed. Plateau has become one of the nation’s blood fountains where innocent and defenceless people are slaughtered with reckless abandon.
Angry Lawmakers
Commentators describe Governor Lalong’s attitude to the leadership of Plateau State as one that lacks adequate or genuine commitment to protect lives and properties of the people. And that is the central message in the ultimatum of the lawmakers who sought to extract a commitment from the governor to ensure the security of the state. “We call on Gov Simon Bako Lalong to come up with a statement defending us as a people and to bring back renewed commitment to the cause of Plateau.” By this move, the lawmakers acted like soldiers from the rear telling their commander at the battlefront how to fight the enemy.
While awaiting a statement of commitment from the governor, the lawmakers had asked the communities to defend themselves from attackers due to the failure of the government to protect them. Philip Dasun, Chairman, House Committee on Information announced this when he briefed journalists in Jos.
“We call on Gov Simon Bako Lalong to come up with a statement defending us as a people and to bring back renewed commitment to the cause of Plateau. We strongly call on Plateau people to practically stand up and defend themselves and their communities, as the conventional security design is no longer guaranteeing our safety as a people.
“As an assembly with people at heart, we call on Plateau citizens to have confidence in us with renewed commitment. We have given two weeks to the governor to take action on the resolutions the House has forwarded on security matters and how to restore peace.”
Furthermore, the lawmaker called on traditional rulers to take appropriate action: to look inward and release the local security design to protect Plateau people, as well as reinforce the vigilante, hunters and local wise men to defend the people.
According to Mr Dasun, as a sign of commitment to the urgent need for the people to protect themselves, the Plateau State House of Assembly had directed all the local government Chairmen to suspend their planned recruitment of Ad-hoc teachers and instead, recruit 200 vigilante personnel in each local government area to boost and augment local intelligence gathering. It was that bad. It showed the prolonged deterioration of the security situation in Plateau under Lalong.
“On behalf of the assembly, I wish to sympathise with the government and Plateau people on the barbaric and dastardly killings that have been taking place in different communities in the state. I sympathise with communities in Bassa, Barkin Ladi, Bokkos, Jos North, Jos South, Mangu, Riyom, University of Jos community and recently, Yelwa Zangam.
“The House condemns these killings in totality. The killings are unacceptable and condemnable. We commiserate with the families of all those who lost their loved ones during these attacks,” he said. Security operatives sealed up the premises of the State House of Assembly on the next sitting day (Monday August 29).
Follow Reverberations
During his recent visit to the affected communities where he promised some relief materials to the people, a resident told the governor and his entourage that the people want “effective leadership.” He wondered who the governor would govern if every member of the community was killed.
These developments do not suggest that the Plateau lawmakers would receive from Gov Lalong a “renewed commitment to the cause of Plateau”; pointing to allegations against the governor as one whose attitude and body language show a leader detached from the people he is leading. Lalong is accused of being standoffish, indifferent and impersonal.
When contacted, the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr Macha Dopa, said the state government is doing a lot to fight insecurity in Plateau. He did not expatiate. He was indignant at suggestions that the governor is ambivalent towards insecurity in the state.
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) recently attacked Lalong over the handling of the killings in the state, describing him as a weak leader.
In a statement issued by the HURIWA National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko in Lagos, the group accused Lalong of being dishonest in the handling of killings involving the major religious groups in Plateau.
Similarly, a Jos-based legal practitioner, Mr Emmanuel Menseh Madaki, Senior Partner at M.Y. Saleh (SAN) & Co. blamed the worsening insecurity in the state on Lalong’s style of leadership and his government’s “manifest show of ineptitude and happy-go-lucky attitude.”
Madaki expressed these views in an open letter to Gov. Lalong regarding the incessant carnage in Irigwe community. He believes that the herdsmen/farmers crises and menace escalated wildly with the government treating the issue with kid gloves instead of a hammer.
The legal practitioner noted that insecurity had developed into a lucrative industry of banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and killings all over Plateau State, pointing out that “the unfortunate situation is that criminality is being perpetrated almost on recurrent basis, yet there is no modicum of visible effort being demonstrated by the government towards allaying the timeless and perennial fears of the people instead.”
Killing the Economy
The killings have serious economic implications. Investors are scared away and businesses are destroyed. People’s assets are plundered and unemployment soars.
Data by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that Plateau recorded a total revenue of N54.76 billion in 2020, made up of N35.64 billion FAAC (65 per cent of total revenue) and N19.12 billion IGR (35 per cent of total revenue). Total taxes amount to N17.11 billion out of which N15.5 (90.6 per cent) is PAYEE. Domestic and external debts were N137.33 billion and $37.92 million, respectively. The 2021 budget is N147.6 billion.
State governments are responsible for the security of lives and properties in their domain. If lawmakers in Plateau State have joined in the call for the people to defend themselves, where then is the help from Abuja? Will Gov. Lalong speak or wait? How long will he wait? Will he come up with a statement defending the people and bringing back renewed commitment to the cause of Plateau? The lawmakers said they would know the next line of action after the two-week ultimatum.
About the Author
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
