Yakubu Busari
A Special compendium on the stewardship of the Rescue Government of His Excellency Rt.Hon. Simon Bako Lalong of Plateau state
With the latest population projection of the State put at well over 4.7 million; and a land mass of 26, 899 square km, the challenge before the Governor at the inception of his administration on May 29, 2015, was unarguably herculean; more so that beyond the surging population and intricate and cascading land mass, religious diversity and a crowded ethnic configuration had become tendentious and turbulent issues in the state’s development aspirations and socio-political narrative.
Unarguably, besides sociological thorns and atomistic ethno-religious relations, it was veritably a troubled inheritance: from the mood of the public servants to the state of public infrastructures and inter-cultural affinities, there was little to cheer. The Plateau State public accounts were in red; and plagued further by arrears of civil servants salaries, unpaid pensions and gratuities, and, not the least, contractor debts and banks overdrafts.
From the period of electioneering and campaigns, good enough, Rt. Hon. Simon Bako Lalong did not lose sight of the enormity of the task ahead. Accordingly, he code-named his campaign philosophy as a “Rescue Mission”, which eventually crystallized the “Rescue Agenda” when his gubernatorial ship set sail following his convincing win of the gubernatorial election of 2015. For him, to restore good governance, equity, and justice in the state’s public space was both a necessity and urgency – with good conscience as the predicate.
THE BEGINNING AND THE TEMPLATE
To achieve the imperative of good governance through institutional reforms and identification of core values, a transition committee headed by his vastly experienced deputy, Professor Sonni Gwanle Tyoden, was put in place ahead of the inauguration of the new administration to do an inventory check, “take proper stock, redefine governance, and clear the Aegean stable”. The thorough job done by this committee became the foretaste and forebear of the critical actions, decisions, policies, and programmes of the Lalong Administration to re-connect the people with their development aspirations and age-long struggle through genuine peace building measures and spread of projects across the state. Thus, the different ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) of government were re-enforced and repositioned to drive the Rescue Agenda to empirical and clinical effects.
PAYMENT OF STAFF SALARIES
As the engine room and elixir in the implementation of government policies and programs, the state civil servants deserved to be re-mobilized, away from understandable apathy and despair that characterised their mood then following accumulated unpaid salaries, and be made to see them being carried along with a sense of dignity. Quickly, the new administration negotiated and secured the understanding of the organised labour to disembark from a state wide strike action, in the spirit of a new dawn and a fresh beginning. Like the morning after a turbulent night, the civil servants soon started to smile. First, the Federal Government’s bailout funds to the states came, thanks to the experience and visionary leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari. The funds were not just appropriately disbursed, but disbursed transparently courtesy of a joint government–labour committee that ensured that it all went well. In the ensuing days and months, the administration’s policy of prompt payment of civil servants salaries subsisted much to the satisfaction and cheer of the relieved state workers who in turn nicknamed His Excellency, as ‘Governor Alert’, a joyous and thankful metaphor for the endless bank alerts workers received from their banks as their salaries hit their accounts as a routine and uncommon convention.
PEACE AND SECURITY
“Meaningful development can only thrive in an atmosphere of peace and security”. This time–honoured truth was not in Plateau State when Governor Simon Bako Lalong mounted the mantle of leadership. The public governance environment in the state was hostile, suspect, fragile, with tempests and tensions ostensibly emitting and radiating from everywhere. With the state in sharp and steady descent to what Professor Emmanuel Ayandele, former vice chancellor of the University of Calaba, once described as an “atomistic society perpetually at war with itself”, Lalong’s immediate search and quest for peace and security was certainly an unenviable task. Again, this was one inheritance characterized by a crisis of confidence for which administrative brinkmanship and security ingenuity were in urgent demand to restore normalcy. Apart from working in a collaborative and dutiful concert with agencies of state security to actualize a restoration of peace, Lalong hit a master stroke for confidence building and consolidation of the gains of inter-agency co-operation by conceiving and establishing a Plateau Peace Building Agency with a Director-General in charge to develop and implement an enduring road map to peace. This historic institutional innovation came into being on February 2, 2016. This project captures a paradigm shift on the part of government, from reactionary approaches to peace keeping and peace building, to proactive initiative to study, gauge, and report early warning signals and move fast to neutralize potentials for sentiments to snowball, fester, and degenerate into sectarian crises with incalculable socio-political consequences.
Thus vested with a mandate for sustainable peace and harmonious co-existence, the Agency has been working round the clock to identify conflict areas, engage stakeholders, and explore the instrument of dialogue to neutralize cultural stereotypes, affect and mobilize demographic groups and configurations, in a multi-step approach and effort to spread the message of peace and persuade all on the need for understanding and tolerance as the new order, the sure way forward, and the road to peace, security, development, and prosperity.
During the Executive Retreat to update human capital and skills preparatory to effective take off and implementation of the second phase of the Rescue Agenda, emphasis was again placed on peace and security as one of the cardinal policies of the administration. Accordingly, resource personnel and facilitators for the retreat were drawn from the security agencies. In other words, the Lalong administration is leveraging on the presence and know-how of the security agencies to strike a synergy and collaboration that will enthrone enduring peace in the State.
Again, deriving from the success and resolutions of the Executive Retreat, Governor Lalong inaugurated a Glorious Stars committee with a mandate to recapture the past glory of Plateau by reconnecting with national and international talents that took off from Plateau, as part of grand efforts to reposition the state and set it on the path of a rich heritage and glorious history.
DEVELOPMENT, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL SANITY
This is another area where the Lalong administration earned the respect and admiration of friends and foes alike, including a loud and outstanding commendation from no less a personality, statesman, and former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd). With lean resources and an atmosphere not conducive for development and thrive of industry, Governor Lalong, right from inception, as a matter of resolve and policy, chose to complete inherited uncompleted projects from past administrations, arguing that doing so was one sure way to impact on the people since such projects are meant for the good of Plateau people. Thus, the administration went on to complete on-going projects that were spread across the state. It is on record, as at press time, that the Lalong government has completed and commissioned a lot of projects – mostly roads and bridges, including the gigantic secretariat junction overhead bridge; and the extensive Secretariat Junction–Mararaba Jama’a dual carriage way which was commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari during one of his state visits to Plateau State. Statistics show that the administration, during its first tenure, completed and rehabilitated more than thirty (30) projects which have wide ranging positive effects on the state’s socio-economic aggregates, including rehabilitation and face-lift of the State House of Assembly Complex.
In the latest and well-received and celebrated effort of the administration, massive streets lighting was undertaken and delightfully executed by the State Government within the first hundred days of the Administration beginning from May 29, 2019. Apart from beautification and boosting tourism appeal of the state capital, Jos, the streets lights have helped a great deal to ease the wave of crimes and sundry nocturnal misdeeds that showed a tendency to interrupt the gains so far achieved in the restoration of peace and security. Leisure and hospitality businesses particularly have the government to thank for this, as the development has boosted their operational hours and shored up customer traffic and turn over.
At the October Executive Retreat, the policy of infrastructural provision and economic rebirth received new and added impetus, as it was treated by different facilitators and resource persons as a macro issue that holds the key to the success of other sectors. This informed part of the resolutions of the Retreat in which participants agreed that ministries, departments, and agencies have to intensify revenue generating options to ensure that economic planning works with the reality of internally generated revenue rather than the unpredictable federal allocations.
To further boost the new task of the MDAs, Governor Lalong inaugurated a 38-man economic and investment summit committee headed by the deputy governor to work out modalities to convene an economic summit that will ultimately showcase the state’s comparative economic advantages, and usher in an investment climate that will turn around the general fortunes of the state, especially its ability towards self sustenance.
THE HIGH COURT COMPLEX
Governor Lalong recently inspected the progress of work at the Plateau High Court. Undertaken to facilitate the administration of justice from a conducive environment, it is one of the landmark projects that the administration will bequeath as critical index of the success story of the Rescue Administration.
REDISCOVERY AND RECAPITALIZATION OF PLASU
The State’s development claims and aspirations are hinged on availability and access to skills and general manpower to drive the co-ordinate sectors of its economy. This imperative no less gave nexus and necessity to the establishment of the State University, Bokkos, which was of anomalous and moribund status when Governor Lalong took over headship of the State affairs in 2015. With determination and swipe, the Lalong administration moved quickly and revamped what had almost become a dashed hope and aborted value. Thus, the governing council, a critical component for the smooth and effective running of the university, was reconstituted with the revered and astute university administrator, Professor Attahiru Jega, as Chairman of Council and Pro-Chancellor.
This opened the gates of the university once again, and re-cast its readiness for academic business, as 17 programmes of the university also got accredited, and two sets of its graduates, who had been roaming and lurking hopelessly, got mobilized, and participated in the NYSC scheme for the first time in 2017.
Similarly, the University Authority moved quickly to also revive and reactivate its continuous staff development programme. To get these programmes running, several memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and similar Agreements were signed to establish linkages with various universities overseas. These Agreements are already effective as some academic staff of the University is already pursuing programmes and getting teaching and research exposure in various fields of their specialization.
Most of these developments are facilitated and enhanced with interventions from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund) and the NEEDS office of the Federal Ministry of Education. With additional funding from the State Government, PLASU today boasts of several accredited programmes, infrastructure provision, and human capital development. By recent events and organised activities and competitive inter-school interaction, PLASU is already a reference point; and an emerging global destination in research, learning, and supervision for academic excellence.
Meanwhile, in anticipation of the foregoing, the vice chancellor of the University, Prof Yohanna Izam, has promised and vowed that infrastructural expansion is a sustained programme under his administration.
DOWN TO THE BASICS – THE UBE STORY
By May 2015, education in Plateau State was in straits; with schools performance in public examinations woeful, and trailing other states of the nation from a distant behind. Standing at 36th position out of 37 states in the 2015 WAEC performance index and ranking, a state of emergency was advisable for the state educational sub-sector. This was rather appalling for Lalong whose government pleads the Rescue mantra as its modus operandi. Thus, from parents/teachers/pupils preparedness for school resumption to a unified general school time table, the Lalong Administration charged the UBE Board to embark on broad based initiatives to shore up quality of education in all public schools, including Junior Secondary Schools, with timeline for continuous assessment, examinations, and mid-term break. The UBE Board has since swung into quality/control and standards sustenance efforts to restore scholarship and distinctive performance in the State’s public schools. From the provision and supply of instructional materials to the evaluation and placement of teachers to development programmes and computerisation and information and communication technology and construction of new classrooms, UBE’s approach to repositioning education in public schools has been holistic in terms of content and spread across the state. Yet, as at press time, the UBE Board was still at it: it is working hard to implement the school feeding programme as a vital component of the UBE as conceived and adopted by the All Progressives Congress, APC.
BEYOND FOUNDATION AND BASICS
The State Educational sub-sector generally has had a transformation and recreational re-enactment during the Lalong administration more than ever before. Student’s bursaries and scholarship grants are a reinvigorated policy under the Rescue Administration. Moreover, democracy dividends during the same dispensation cover payment of examinations and special charges for Plateau indigenes in higher cadres of technical education such as the law school and medical students, and those studying at the National Mathematical Centre. These students’ welfare schemes proceed concomitantly with provision of classrooms and laboratories that conduce effective learning, while non-formal education is also encouraged and sustained as the government utilizes opportunities created by partnering with international donor agencies and counterpart funding.
FARMERS AND AGRICULTURAL BOOM
In the policy thrust of the Lalong Administration, agriculture is given prominence as the catalyst and extirpating factor for the much desired economic revolution and industrial growth. Thus, the Administration has embarked on exploring the details of the state’s vast agrarian environment with a view to identifying areas of agricultural production where it has national and international comparative advantage; and to encourage farmers of such crops with improved seedlings, fertilizers, expertise, information, and technological innovations to improve and increase production and yield for domestic consumption, industrial growth, and export requirement.
The State’s College of Agriculture, Garkawa, a cannon in the state’s drive for agricultural excellence and food security, expectedly received priority attention of the government to facilitate its agricultural initiatives such as research and experimentation. These included completion of counterpart funding for Fadama I and II projects, release of funds for the accreditation of the college’s academic programmes, and the establishment of Fadama Farmer’s Micro Finance Bank in Jos to enable farmers access loans and allied facilities to expand and step up the volume of agricultural activities.
A major milestone of the Administration`s agricultural drive is the resuscitation of the bountiful but long abandoned Panyam fish farm. The government accordingly trained over fifty fish farmers on modern fish farming methods, signed a memorandum of understanding with SOLBEC LTD for public private partnership in respect of the fish farm; and re-aligned the state ministry of agriculture, the Plateau Agricultural Development Programme, the Agricultural Services Training Centre and Marketing Ltd to steer the local economy in this regard.
Efforts by the Administration to revamp and reposition the agricultural sub-sector are a holistic concept including crop production and cultivation of land, animal husbandry, pest control, silos/storage, processing and packaging of agricultural produce, wind and solar power generation and marketing. Apart from cultivating and servicing 18,465 farmers with 30,144 hectares of land; and holding 7,608 Mp field visits to farmers by extension agents, the government has also successfully held 136 management training plots and signed MOUs with Greenland Integrated Agri-business Ltd to set up storage facilities, fruits and vegetables storage, milk packaging plant and diary/pig, swine genetic centre, poultry processing plant and integrated power generation plant across the state.
In a similar vein, the Plateau Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency, PRUWASSA, in collaboration with various donor agencies, has been effective in the discharge of its mandate in different communities in the state. As at present time, it was on record that PRUWASSA has completed thirty-one (31) water schemes in different communities across the state.
HEALTHY CITIZENS, WEALTHY PLATEAU
All investments in other sectors of the state will come to naught if the citizenry is not healthy enough to manage and direct such toward prolific and regenerative ends. Thus, the administration’s policy on health subsumes preventive, curative, and structural paradigms to ensure all-round and responsive health care delivery. Thus, budgetary provisions to the health sector cater for diseases control and prevention, staff welfare, procurement of drugs and sundry medical facilities, hospital services, and health care centres. While the government has worked routinely to ensure industry best practices at the hospitals and health centres, it has also ensured that vital amenities are available at the state general and cottage hospitals, as well as renovated dilapidated structures and generating plants in these hospitals.
The Plateau Agency for the Control of AIDS, PLACA, has been outstanding in delivering on its thematic assignments. From promotion of behaviour changes and prevention of new infections, to treatment of HIV/AIDS related health conditions, to care and support services, to training of PLHIV, PABA and DCVs on skills acquisition, to policy, human rights and legal advocacy, PACA has been very committed and effective in providing relief and counterforce to the scary phenomenon of AIDS.
INVESTMENT, TRADE, AND INDUSTRIES
In the area of business development, the emphasis of the Lalong administration has been on identifying demographic groups and exploring technology, information, and expertise to equip and empower such groups and engage them in vacations and trades with huge regenerative potentials. Thus, as a matter of policy and drive, the administration embraced and promoted financial literacy, entrepreneurship, vocational and skill acquisition, with attention and emphasis directed at the youth and women group to chart a chain of production activities that will enervate the economy.
This policy has been boosted with the establishment of Micro Finance & Small and Medium Enterprises Agency to register, direct financial facilities, and ensure a stable financial environment favourable to their sustenance and continuity in business. Development Economists say the establishment of the Agency is an empirical way to tackle and check the surge of unemployment especially among the vulnerable youth and women population, who have been able to explore the benefits of the Agency to increase the value of the chain of the SMEs.
The policy has not just seen to the training of thousands of youths, women and physically challenged persons, such beneficiaries have also been linked to financial institutions such as commercial and microfinance banks, and encouraged to key into the Micro insurance policy in order to achieve a good level of financial inclusion. Similarly, the Governor Simon Bako Lalong Rescue Administration also promotes and upholds deepening financial inclusion with the setting up of a Micro Finance fund meant to support and sustain Microfinance Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, MSMEs in the state. The state Micro Finance Bank also established by Lalong is the first of its kind in Nigeria and indeed, West Africa. Still, in a bid to enhance Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, Lalong provided special intervention to stimulate and encourage people with special skills to source and access finance for their innovations and creative works. The result of this includes the production of the first tractor by the state, and Rice milling machines – all patented in Plateau State.
INDUSTRIALIZATION AND RECAPITALIZATION
The Lalong Administration has also demonstrated determination and zeal to boost the state’s industrial profile. The Governor believes the forays made to expand and increase agricultural production will not have maximum impact if there is no commensurate effort to establish relevant industries to utilize the produce from the farms which are expected to increase with mechanization and other technological inputs. Thus, while the Government is making efforts to ensure that products such as Irish Potato and tomatoes in which the state has incomparable national advantage can be processed and packaged for export, there is also the policy of reviving other moribund industries to expand the state’s industrial environment and open up economic opportunities to boost youth employment and local per capita income. The Plateau Bottling Company, which has been revived and is in full economic activity in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of the State, is a towering and standing evidence of the benefits of this policy of industry recapitalization.
Similarly, the Plateau State Government under Simon Bako Lalong has fulfilled all requirements, including providing the required hectares of land, for the establishment and take off of the proposed Jos Inland Container Depot. The zeal of the government in this project is borne by the project’s huge potential and propensity to generate and catalyze a chain of economic activities, which in turn translate as employment opportunities and improvement in the quality of life of citizens of the state. It is also expected that upon completion, the Jos Inland Container Depot would increase the volume of traffic and aeronautic carriage of the Yakubu Gowon Airport, Heipang, Plateau State.
THE JOS MAIN MARKET
Since March 12, 2002 when the famous Jos Main Market went up in flames, the same edifice, lying in ruins and looking adequately obsolete, had become a subject of much political talk, bargaining chip, and a reference point in political filibuster and administrative gerrymander for one administration after another. However, the Lalong Administration has upped the ante, by departing and avoiding the path of jaw-jawing to match policy with action. With the demolition of the old, weathered, and physically impoverished structure, the hope of restoring the economic colossus has been revived as the 2020 and 2021 State Appropriations will captured and reflected phases in the reconstruction of the market structure and complex to resume commercial activities and recapture its status as a regional destination in competitive discourse on trade and commerce.
In the latest arrangement, the State government under Simon Bako Lalong has signed a memorandum of understanding with JAIZ BANK to undertake the reconstruction of the Market up to the point of completion. The management of JAIZ BANK has in turn promised to deliver on the terms and spirit of the MOU, and complete the rebuilding of the Market within stipulated period.
TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY
A flagship of the hospitality industry in Jos, that is the popular Hill Station Hotel, received early attention from the Lalong Administration as the Hotel received a facelift after several years of decay and sharp drop in customer patronage.
Renovation work was carried out on most of the dilapidated structures, and certain disposables such as rug carpets and furniture were replaced as part of emergency interventionist efforts to get the Hotel back to industry standards and set for competitive business.
A statement by the state’s Economic Adivsory learn had earlier explained and assured that the management of the Hotel has charged following buy over of majority stake holding by the Plateau State Government under Governor Simon Lalong. This was followed by a total review of the Hotel’s status in order to revamp it as the government has been working to raise the state’s tourism profile. Part of the desired results of this recapitalization initiative is that the Hill Station Hotel has once again become a choiced accommodation option for Nollywood personnel on field operations in Jos and its environs.
Closely allied to the foregoing is the return of the yearly Jos International Trade Fair which had long faded and capitulated to the shadows of sectarian crises that plagued the Plateau landscape for years. As a matter of fact, Governor Simon Bako Lalong did not just take over the affairs of Plateau State on May 29, 2015, he actually inherited a state with acute image and perception problems as it was disparaged nationally and internationally as crises-ridden and suffused with bloodletting and riddled with mass graves.
But with determined and spirited efforts at reconciliation of demographic groups and peace building, frayed nerves were soon calmed; with a new confidence and sense of belonging being shared among the citizenry. The pervasiveness of this was eloquently manifest in the 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 Jos International Trade Fair. Participation in the trade fair was not only colourful, it was cross-border, inter-cultural and evinced a multi-lateral collaboration that only a society enjoying unreserved peace can boast of. It was the occasion that also showcased a flourish of social life even in the night in its best of forms and quantum, befitting a place popularly known as “home of peace and tourism”, ever since the sociology of the 2001 crisis.
A further rich outcome of the successful trade fair was its continuity thence, and the conception and staging of the Plateau Cultural Carnival, now a yearly event attracting visitors, friends, tourists, and peoples from diverse walks of life to come and behold in the warmth of the people, the tranquillity and serenity of the land, and the diversity and abundance of nature capped with an intricate weather.
The outcome of the work of the two committees put in place on the heels of the Executive Retreat is also expected to impact positively on the state’s tourism profile, and also service the imperatives of peace and unity throughout the State.
THE BRITISH-AMERICA JUNCTION FLYOVER
This is a transformational and revolutionary introduction into the State economy, especially the Capital city of Jos because of the interface this junction provides for the daily business endeavours and movement within and out of the State. Scheduled to be completed before the Lalong administration winds up, the N9billion, one kilometre project is designed to ease the traffic gridlock and hardship experience by road users as they traverse to their business locations, schools, or the Jos University Teaching Hospital in Lamingo. When completed, the project will as well enhance the interconnectivity of the Jos roads network, and also boosts its tourist profile and monuments.
THE LEGACY PROJECTS
Spread across the state, and mostly health and educational facilities, Governor Lalong overcame a major obstruction to the realisation of this worthwhile dream when he defeated agents of retrogression in Court in a legal battle that was conceived to frustrate the project. With the Court judgment, the projects are continuing throughout the State as landmark signatures that the Rescue Administration indeed meant well for the people.
BY AND LARGE
That the Lalong administration achieved so much owes a lot to his commitment to the Plateau Dream and the clarity of his vision. The Miinistries of Budget and Planning, and Finance and Economic Development were of timely and effective co-ordinating role in the success story. This was further enhanced by the regulatory position and quality control intervention and advice from the office of the Efficiency Unit.
As the Rescue Agenda enters the “GeneratioNext” Level, as has already been commended in the fourth resolution of the recently concluded Executive Retreat, quality control and monitoring and evaluation will be provided and sustained by the Project Management Office. With the reforms put in place, the renewed zeal and commitment of the MDAs, the coordinate and complementary activities of the high profile committees already inaugurated and enabled, it is indeed a clinical session of a Rescue operation, spear-headed by a man about whom destiny speaks more or less but reveals so much. Having earned regional recognition as Chairman of the Northern Governor’s Forum, it is a season of real surgery and salvage engineering to reinvent Plateau, as Rt Hon Simon Bako Lalong cruises on to higher heights with a state and its people who occupy a special place in the Nigeria Project.
2023: TRANSITION TO GENERATIONEXT
Interestingly, the APC gubernatorial congress has ended without rancour, and the Party has settled for the candidature of Nentawe Yilwatda Goshwen, whose gubernatorial campaign philosophy and modus operandi is GeneratioNext. Given the smooth manner the Rescue Agenda is giving way to GeneratioNext, it is worthwhile to point out the natural synergy and interface of the two as the one has put in place so much for enduring development to thrive, as the incoming plans and hopes to build its programmes and policies around the youth and women groups as riders into a future of prosperity and welfare.
In content and outlook, GeneratioNext is a digital re-expression and re-enactment of the Plateau Agenda. As the good people of Plateau choose to enable the Nentawe Yilwatda Goshwen government after a successful transition, rudiments or projects completed by the Rescue administration will drive and catalyse the thrust,No dimensions, and details of GeneratioNext as a governmental philosophy.
