By: Our Reporter,
APC PLATEAU STATE CHAPTER, EWAREWAH HOUSE, YAKUBU GOWON WAY, JOS
RE: THE QUEST FOR A STRONGER, UNITED AND BETTER PLATEAU STATE
The attention of the All Progressives Congress, APC Plateau State Chapter has been drawn to a press release by the People’s Democratic Party in the state with the above heading.
A perusal of the piece clearly brings to the fore the predicament of the party which has found itself in a complete quandary and quagmire.
In fact the law of diminishing return seemed to have been propounded with the Peoples Democratic Party in Plateau State in mind.
The party which has inflicted so much damage by fighting itself to a standstill, is in the wake of heightened political activities now blaming Governor Simon Bako Lalong as and the ruling APC in the state as usual for its misfortunes.
According to the press release by its spokesman, John Akans, the party is strategizing to regain power in Plateau state as part of its quest for a better Plateau.
Let the point be cleanly made that the PDP’s quest would remain a long wait and long walk to nowhere as long as it continues to see nothing wrong with its style and arbitrary conduct.
First, it ought to realize that, it has been totally rejected by Plateau people twice in 2015 and 2019.
Instead of conducting a surgical operation on itself, it wreaked more grievous havoc on itself which led to its losing out from the October last year local government election.
As it is today, the party stands a great risk of not fielding candidates for the 2023 General elections due to lingering litigations bothering on impunity and unbending stance its sole proprietor.
Remember Honourable Bitrus Kaze, a former Member of the House of Representatives and a Chairmanship aspirant under the party who was ruthlessly edged out of the contest for falling out of favour with the sole proprietor, had warned those who cared to listen that the party’s repeat state congress in September 2021 was worse than the first one as 12 LGAs were excluded from the exercise with only 5 LGAs said to have participated.
Now the party in the state is heading towards the precipice with the suit instituted by Muhammadu Abdulwahabab, Ali Abubakar and Hamisu Adamu from Kanam LGA, challenging the impunity visited on them by unlawfully replacing and substituting their names as elected officials after duly taking oath of office.
The trio are seeking an order of the Plateau State High Court, to set aside the Congress conducted by the party as, “unconstitutional, unlawful, null, void and of no effect”.
Secondly, they are seeking the Chairman of the party Chris Hassan and his Exco, to vacate their seats and cease forthwith from acting in their various capacities.
These have put paid to what Hon. Bitrus Kaze had foretold in the wake of the repeat congress of the PDP in the State which was mired in unending myriad of controversies.
There are still multiple court cases the party is swimming in which might hasten its final downing.
Watching carefully and with keen interest how the PDP has been behaving in the recent times, it is clear that it is getting more confused and lacks the appropriate line of action to redeem itself and convince the remnant of its members who have become totally disenchanted due to its exclusionist tendencies.
Its major pillars, financiers and strategic stakeholders in the state, including its gubernatorial candidate in the 2019 election, Senator Jeremiah Timbut Useni, the late Senator Ibrahim Mantu, former Deputy Senate President and Board Member of the party from its inception, Hon Damishi Sango, State Chairman of the party and former Minister of Sports who Jang made sure they were all sidelined in the power sharing formula and you expect to have peace in such party?
You cannot certainly eat your pie and have it.
It is against this backdrop that one wonders, who the party is trying to deceive with its arrangee. APC members defecting to the PDP, which it claimed it received 12,000 defectors in Langtang North alone!
As usual, the PDP’s love for quoting bogus figures is simply embarrassing. Going by the APC membership registration, the number of registered members in the local government, with 114 polling units is supposed to be 22,400 at 200 per polling unit if at all, the membership cards were exhausted.
How can a decampee himself receive fellow decampees to the party without the key stakeholders of the party?
Has Honourable Beni Lar, a ranking member ( four term member) of the Federal House of Representatives also fallen out of favour with the sole administrator of the PDP or what is her role in thus defection charade?
Is Honourable Letep sure he is not embarking on a political suicide by defecting to the present PDP as it is presently constituted?
Is he ready to remain a floor member since it has put all its exco and delegates in place? This is a food for thought. We don’t want to delve into the so called big shots who allegedly defected in Langtang North but would watch keenly those who would defect in the central senatorial District where Hon . Letep Dabang hails from and northern Senatorial District.
One of the ways it has resorted to in order to remain relevant is to heap blames and more blames on the Lalong APC administration in the state.
The PDP went to the extreme of accusing the APC of having, “criminally foisted themselves on Plateau people in 2015 and 2019” which to say the least, is as uncharitable as it is unfair and self defeating.
The truth is that, Governor Lalong won his election squarely, fairly and transparently.
The PDP is consistent in its accusation of Governor Lalong making unfulfilled promises which are just the puerile imagination of the party as the difference between the present administration and the past PDP administration is very clear even to the most casual watchers of events.
The PDP, always obsessed with figures which it quotes so lavishly, but wrongly as a means of pulling the wool across the eyes of unsuspecting public, again reeled out figures on different issues.
First, it pointed out that, N400 billion has been wasted with no convincing projects.
The Lalong projects are not window dressing and skewed as those of the immediate past PDP administration. They are both tangible and well spread across the entire state rather than the mindless sinking of state funds in one small district of a local government area.
It also claimed in the press release that the people, especially the youth have been denied of job opportunities and the state is running short of workforce due to retirement and death of public servants.
This accusation cannot fly in the face of the recent report of the John Gobak Committee, which was presented to the state government in January.
The PDP chose to go on a selective process of profiling 20 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs ) in the state and arrived at a clearly mischievous monthly wage bill of N934m instead of N3billion which even the party knows to be false as the wage bill even under the Jang administration was more than N2billion with lots of ghost workers who were weeded by the Lalong administration.
The true position according to the report of the Gobak Committee which took a painstaking and wholistic look at the workforce, screened a total of 74 MDAs instead of the selective 20 listed by the PDP.
It authenticated 13,978 staff on the payroll of the State. This dropped to 13, 809 as at December 31st, 2021 which is 172 less.
With this report, the government has a very clear picture of its staff strength and employment and replacement of staff instead of the self-seeking and confused strategy employed by the past dispensation of posting workers back to their local government of origin and employment and putting square pecks in round holes which created confusion and disaffection in the system.
We call on the PDP as we have always done, to learn to set its house in order to serve and play the role of a credible opposition party.
Signed:
Hon. Sylvanus Namang,
APC State Publicity Secretary
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