Who Is Governor Lalong Trying To Please?

 By Charles Okoh

It is difficult to fathom whose interest Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State, is out to serve. Governor Lalong for some inexplicable reasons has chosen to look away while the once peaceful state has been turned into a huge killing field. Lalong’s personal ambition, it seems, has left him satisfied with the albatross he carries around in the name of being the chairman of the Northern States’ Governors Forum and his desire not to upset the presidency, even in the face of a clear threat to exterminate the people of the state.

*Lalong 

June 2018, over 100 people were killed in Gindi Akwati, Ruku, Kura, Rapps, Kinshan, Gengere, Heipang, and Gana Ropp areas of the state. The gory incident forced Governor Lalong, who was in Abuja to attend the All Progressives Congress (APC) national convention, to abandon the convention and return home to attend to the situation.

ust when it was believed that peace had returned to the state, 2021 has witnessed another orgy of mind-numbing killings. In June this year, the Plateau state police command received a report that 10 persons were shot dead in a drinking joint at Sabon Layi, Kuru in Jos South LGA by gunmen who drove in with a Hilux and shot sporadically.

In July, there was an attack on over 20 farms in Miango, Bassa Local Government Area of the state in which terrorists attacked and destroyed maize farms.

On August 14th, a convoy of 22 Muslims travellers from Bauchi to Ondo State was waylaid and killed in Rukuba, a suburb of Jos. The killing of the 22 travellers, including four students, forced the management of UNIJOS to suspend its second-semester examination for the 2019/2020 academic session, just as it began to settle down after the prolonged ASUU strike and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Students of the University of Jos had raised the alarm over the continued attacks on them by hoodlums, whom they said killed four students in five days. Reprisal killings, kidnappings and destruction and general display of lawlessness around the town by unknown elements have continued to plague the state.

One of the horrid images of the attacks in August was the site of about 17 charred corpses cornered into a community leader’s home in Yelwang Zangam in Jos North Local Government. They were mostly children between 13 and three.

According to witnesses the killings had followed a dispute over a parcel of land in the community which Fulani settlers used to bury their dead. The owner of the land had claimed that the settlers never paid and this spiraled into violence. At least 36 persons lost their lives in a single day, the highest count of violence in a day – August 24.

Between Jos North and Bassa local governments, 86 lives were snuffed out in a spate of attacks which aggrieved natives described as ‘the expansionist aim of Fulani settlers.’

Recently, Governor Lalong expressed his frustration with the federal government in failing to stop the killings in his state and refusing to allow him deal decisively with the situation, even after investing in equipment that can change the tide.

According to Lalong, he and his colleagues have been investing heavily in the procurement of weapons and equipment for security forces, but they do not have the desired support of the federal government to deploy some of them to tackle the insecurity in their states.

He specifically said that after acquiring drones with which to help stave the killings, the use of such drones was refused on the basis that the state had no end-user certificate.

His words: “In some cases, the governors will use their money to buy the equipment and technology but they will tell you that you don’t have an end-user certificate. And you are waiting for an end-user certificate while your people are being killed every time.

“I cannot go and buy drones and keep them for three years and there is no end-user certificate and I see my people being killed. End-user certificates for the use of drones are issued by the Office of the National Security Adviser.

According to him, the governors have made recommendations on the need to urgently allow the establishment of state police, in order to rescue the country from increasing insecurity.

“Initially we (northern state governors) were against state police. But recent events show that it is a problem. The number of police is not there.

“But to us even without having state police, half of the police expenditure is funded by the governors.  We are already funding the police.”

Governor Lalong, as the chairman of northern governors’ forum, is helpless and does not want to offend anybody by saying so. What it now means is that he will just sit there as governor of the northern governors’ forum and watch his people being killed just to remain politically correct.

Last week, a veteran journalist and mentor to lots of journalists, Mr. Jonathan Ishaku, lamented how his beans farm was ravaged by suspected Fulani herders.

In his lamentation, Mr. Ishaku said, “Reports just reaching me from my village in Kanke local government area indicates that my beans farm was on Wednesday night, November 3, trespassed by unknown Fulani herders who grazed their cows on my beans farm,  which when I last visited was coming up beautifully thanks to the rains holding up late. This is the second consecutive year that the night grazers have done so with total impunity. Because it is done in the night we cannot even identify the culprits!  Last year it was about a quarter of the farm that was breached, this time round, I understand, it’s over three quarters!”

This is the same fate that continues to befall farmers in the state. People cannot talk because they have no voice and the governor does not want to upset the apple cart. He is ever-running to Abuja for support that does not come rather than sitting with stakeholders and political leaders in the state to address the issues at hand.

You may want to argue that in states where regional security outfits have been raised, what has happened? But my reaction would be to ask if the killings have continued or increased in those areas? If the answer is no then, clearly these regional security outfits are not earning allowances for nothing. Lalong should take a cue.

In the eyes of the president and the presidency, the only form of farming that is noble and worthy of practice is cattle-rearing, anybody doing anything outside this is on his own. This scenario will not change until Buhari and his presidency are out of office.

The Plateau State House of Assembly recently impeached its Speaker, Abok Ayuba, ending weeks of tense relationship between the lawmaker and Governor Lalong. Rumours of imminent impeachment of Mr Ayuba began weeks earlier following write-ups on social media.

The lawmakers from the majority All Progressives Congress (APC) and the minority (PDP), like witches that fly by night, gathered as early as 5:30 a.m. penultimate Thursday in the chamber of the House of Assembly, to execute the clandestine plot, with the full complement of security operatives around the State Assembly complex, and yet the governor still feigns ignorance.

When the impeachment process began, PDP members in the house, who were loyal to Ayuba, seized the mace in a futile bid to stave it off. But their attempt only led to a mild commotion as members of the APC retrieved the mace from them and continued the process.

The speaker had fallen out with Governor Lalong over the security situation in the state, especially recent attacks. Mr Ayuba felt Gov Lalong has not done enough to address the security challenges facing the state.

Like Jonah Jang, a former governor of the state said, “the executive has tried to wash its hands off the events in the House of Assembly, but the more the Governor and his handlers try to spin a story around the issue, the more glaring it became that the six members, who staged an impeachment were only acting out a script for the Governor, the hasty nature with which the Governor hurriedly received a ‘new speaker’ knowing full well, being a lawyer, that what happened was an aberration, speak volumes.”

Meanwhile, the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, ordered the redeployment of Edward Egbuka, the Plateau State police commissioner, who unabashedly took sides with the governor, and the shameless legislators, in the ignoble impeachment of Speaker Ayuba.

Lalong should retrace his footsteps; he has continued to lose relevance among stakeholders in the state, if Speaker Ayuba is unaware of efforts by Governor Lalong to address the security problems facing the state, as number three citizen, it then means the governor is not doing enough.

*Okoh is a commentator on public issues