Governor Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang of Plateau State had a parley with members of the state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), where he spoke on his achievements in one year in office. Saturday Tribune’s Deputy Northern Bureau Chief, ISAAC SHOBAYO, brings excerpts.

The past year has not been rosy in view of the security and other challenges your administration has grappled with. How are you tackling the situation?

Since you’ve been following us diligently, of course, you will recall that when we took over this time last year, the burning issue on the table was security, or insecurity, as you may want to look at it. Three weeks before my inauguration, you will recall that a raid of terror was unleashed on Mangu and Bokkos. And when we came in, we tried to rejig the security architecture, as it were. And I think that by June or thereabouts last year, we began to notice a decline. And we kept having sporadic attacks here and there for the rest of the year until the unfortunate December 24-26 incident that descended particularly upon Bokkos when we had a black Christmas. That was a painful episode that I will never forget. But in dealing with the security challenges, I want to first of all thank Mr President. When I reached out to him, particularly in December, he was quite sympathetic. You will recall that he immediately dispatched the Vice President to come over and assess the situation. And thereafter, we saw a series of engagements with the military chiefs.

And as you know, part of the challenge of managing security is the federal structure which we operate because we have a unitary security system in a federal system. And so directives have to come from Abuja, people who are far from the scene. They are not proximate to where the challenges are. And even though governors are the chief security officers of their states, the truth is that you don’t command any troops. And so you need to enhance your management skills in order to relate with the security chiefs and get their men to perform optimally. Of course, along the way, we have also engineered communities to stand up for themselves. We have also promoted both intra- and intercommunity relations so that all the cracks that normally allow these criminals to come in unawares are reduced to the minimum. And I want to thank God that today, we can say that there is relative peace on the Plateau. It’s not yet, Uhuru. We have a long way to go, and I want to assure you that we are continuing to bring out strategies for how to contain and forestall the challenges because we know that those who have been unleashing these attacks have not stopped. They probably would not want to stop. But by the grace of God, we will stop them. We have rejigged Operation Rainbow. We met it virtually on its knees, and we’ve recruited 600 people so far and trained them in addition to those who were already there. We are also working with the hunters. But more importantly, we are raising the patriotism of the security forces on the ground so that they see themselves as duty-bound to protect the people and to end these challenges. In the next couple of weeks, we are going to deploy more technology.

But the assumption or belief in certain quarters is that the crisis in Plateau State is farmers and herders clashing.

It probably began as farmers-herders clashes, but it has progressed beyond farmer-herder clashes. I challenge anyone to tell me that what happened in December in Bokkos was a clash. I don’t think it was. It is unfair to the memory of the dead; people were slaughtered in their sleep, and people were slaughtered after they had prepared their Christmas meals. To say it was a clash between who and who? And I think that you, journalists, have a duty and a responsibility to tell the true story. We cannot continue to hide the fact. We kept saying, unknown men. Where did they come from? Who brought them? For what purpose? Yes, I know. On the other side, natives have often been accused of cattle rustling. But cattle were not rustled only from a particular side. Growing up as a child in my village, I knew many natives who had more cows than Fulanis. At least in my village, I could count two or three men that I remember who had not less than 200 cows. Today in Mangu Local Government, I can tell you, any native that has a cow, you keep it at the risk of your life. So, cattle rustling is a crime across the board. But when you attack a group of people that did not provoke you, is it fair? The army told us in December in Bokos that they were confronting the bandits in 36 locations simultaneously. So, you cannot describe that as a clash. Certainly, this was premeditated, this was unprovoked, and this was senseless murder. And we keep challenging the security agencies. Where are the suspects? We in Plateau State are ready to prosecute suspects. But no one has ever released them to us. So, these are things we continue to challenge the authorities on. And we hope that we will get to a point where these unknowns will be known and we will find a way to stop them from invading our communities.

Your administration recently rolled out metro buses to improve transportation in the state. Apart from road transportation, what other aspects of the sector are you working on?

One of the areas where we immediately deployed the infrastructure fund was to improve urban transportation. And so we invested in those buses. The beauty of those buses is that when the Federal Government plans to convert gasoline engines to CNG, those buses are convertible. That’s why we went for them. And we’ve also tried to remove the old, rickety Plateau Rider vehicles from the road, and we’ve brought in some new looking-glass vehicles. I know some people are quick to critique. When one of the vehicles had an issue on the road, social media was abuzz with the story. I’ve worked at Peugeot Automobile, where we produced new cars, and I know that even new cars can disappoint you. On train services, we have commenced that, but I think it hasn’t been reported that the train has started moving. I think the commissioner for transport should arrange a ride for the journalists. We’ve been working assiduously on this. We kept having several setbacks, but to the glory of God, the train has started this week. In that sense, of course, the entire transport sector is something we are vigorously pursuing.

The recent crises in parts of Plateau State have slowed down the pace of farming. What is your government doing to reposition agriculture in the state?

Agriculture is natural to us. And when we came in last year, because of the challenges, you know, food production dropped. In fact, at a point, we had to mobilise resources and get the ASTC to cultivate about 900 acres of land for the various communities that were displaced. Unfortunately, they couldn’t plant much; they only planted soy beans. But it was better than leaving the land fallow for these criminals to come in and take control. This year, by the grace of God, we have divided Plateau State into three agricultural zones. In the southern zone, we are going to be focusing on rice production. We are looking at the local governments that have an advantage in rice production. It will interest you to know that a lot of yam from the Qan’pan axis has travelled to America, but under the name of being imported from Ghana, all because of the lack of standardisation. We are working on that. We are taking the matter of international standards in food production seriously. And so as we look at how to improve bud, rice, and yam production, we are also looking at how to intensify palm oil production in that zone.

In the central zone, they already have strategic advantage in Irish potato production, and we want to bring Irish potato production to international standards. It is embarrassing that all the eateries that sell chips import their potatoes from South Africa. If you go to all the French fries and KFC, they are importing potatoes from South Africa because they are saying the quality of our own is not up to standard. These standards are not made in heaven; they are made by human beings. So, we are going to also make sure we bring it to standard. That zone also has the best advantage in maize production. These are things we are going to leverage. Also in the northern zone, we are going to leverage asha, vegetables and fruits. It’s not as if other zones don’t produce those things, but in terms of quantity, this is where it is primarily located.

And I want you to know that from what we have learned from the experts, all the mining activity on the Plateau right from the 1960s to date is a scratch on the surface. We haven’t started mining because nobody has done real industrial mining on the Plateau. It means that the mineral deposits are still far inside the ground. All we need to do is create an enabling environment for investors to come in because they are not going to come in in the midst of conflict, even though some of them themselves are agents of conflict. But we are looking at how we are liaising with the Federal Government to see how to put a hand on illegal mining activities. We are aware that quite a bit of activity is taking place on that axis, and we are studying it carefully. When we are done, I am sure we will take the appropriate action. But our strategy in mining is that the mineral deposits must benefit the people of Plateau State. (Saturday Tribune)

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