Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State recently marked two years in office. As part of the activities marking the day, he spoke to some editors on the achievements of his administration so far. He also tried to correct what he described as wrong notions about the nature of insecurity in the state, and other issues, including the government’s efforts against the insecurity challenge in the state, and the need for state police. ZEBULON AGOMUO, Editor, who was at the session, brings the excerpts:
You have been in the saddle for two years now; may we know some of the achievements of your administration so far?
When we took over on May 29, 2023, we were clear-minded that our main focus was to lift our people out of poverty. We came with the understanding that the main constraint, the main thing that has held back our people is poverty. Plateau State is one of the most blessed lands in the country. Our advantage in agriculture is God-given. 90 percent of what we used to call Irish potatoes are produced here. We have renamed it Plateau Potatoes because I think we deserve the exclusive rights in the production of potatoes. We are making plans to really revolutionise the farming, production and processing of those potatoes in the next three to five years. We’ve begun to lay the foundation, the secret of which is about getting the right seeds, which we haven’t had until we came on board. We are planning, we are strategising and we are in talks presently with a company called Agrico, which is a Dutch-based company that is the largest multiplier of seeds in the world. And they visited us here. And it will interest you to also know that we earned the right to host the African Potato Conference. It was held in Uganda. The next one will hold in 2028 in Jos, Plateau State. And so, it’s one crop we are focusing on because it will shock you that hotels like Transcorps and all the five-star hotels don’t use our potatoes. They import from South Africa. You won’t blame them because of the quality of what we produce. You know, for purposes of international standards, you have the concept of traceability from farm preparation to harvest to storage and what have you, before you can even think of export. But it will interest you to know that Mangu, which today is one of the areas that is being challenged security-wise, is one of the largest producers and is perhaps, the biggest food market in Plateau State. People come from West Africa and Northern Africa to Mangu markets.
What is your understanding about the nature of the security challenge in the state?
I’m trying to put this in context, you know, that the challenges of insecurity that we’re battling with, to a large extent, is economic. I have challenged the traditional narrative of the herders-farmers clash. Since coming on board, I found that it’s nothing but trash. It’s a facade to continue with criminality, organised criminality, that’s actually what is happening; it is a deliberate attempt to make sure that people do not cultivate their farms. And if they don’t cultivate their farms, which is their main economic activity, invariably, you have pushed them into poverty. And it is not a coincidence that the insecurity gets heightened at the onset of the farming season, you know. It is not so much in the media.
But we have been battling it on a daily basis. And I can tell you, this is very organised criminality that people try to claim that maybe cattle was rustled and all of that stuff. But, you know, even in law, you know that provocation has to be commensurate with retaliation. You know, you don’t go and deliberately wipe out a whole settlement, a whole village, a whole community, because three cattle were rustled. It doesn’t make sense. But, like I said earlier, our main focus is on building a Plateau economy that is resilient, and we believe that we can build an economy here that runs into billions of dollars, if it is well organised.
Read also: In two years, we have positively impacted our people – Mutfwang
What different approach are you employing to boost agriculture?
Agriculture is one of our main economic drivers. The other aspect of agriculture, which is livestock, is also our focus. This is the best place to raise livestock in the whole country. There’s no question about it. Because of the advantages of weather, presently I can tell you with all confidence that the eggs produced here on the Plateau have the longest lifespan, shelf life in the whole country, because of the weather. And so, one of the things we are trying to leverage is to provide a lead in the propagation of livestock, which again is a strategy to deal with the issue of farmers-herders clashes. I will tell you the economics of open grazing. The cows that are being moved around openly can give you a maximum of two liters of milk a day. But the modern trend is to be able to deal with other species of cattle that give you a far better yield. And I want to say this, that under the last PDP administration, which was led by Governor Jonah Jang, he imported 250 Friesian cattle from South Africa. Each of those cattle gives you nothing less than 20 liters a day. So, you can imagine, all that we’ve been fighting and losing lives over for two liters, when we have actually the opportunity to be able to get 20 liters. And we are saying that our strategy is to be able to give these cattle to families to rear. If a family can have two cows, for example, and can get 20 liters of milk from each of those cows a day, multiplied by seven days and one month, you can imagine the economic prosperity that will come to that family. It will interest you to note also that Nigeria has a supply deficit of milk in millions of liters. I can’t give you the figures now, but we have not been able to meet local demand. So, a lot of milk condensates are still being imported to package milk in this country. So, we are people who are a bit reluctant to welcome the idea of cattle ranching because of the history of RUGA and all of that, you know, that was associated in the past. But we are educating them because RUGA still is built around the Fulani cow, you know, but this has nothing to do with the Fulani cow. We are looking at improved varieties of species of cattle that you can’t move around because in terms of flesh and in terms of milk, they give you far better yield than what we have been battling over. So, by the time we improve the consumption of this new breed of beef and milk, you can imagine what it will mean to the herders because it will mean that there is no more market really for them. Because, again, we are building a 500-capacity abattoir, which means we’ll be slaughtering 500 cattle a day in the abattoir here. And it’s geared for export. Unfortunately, you can’t export the Fulani cow beef, you know, because the quality of beef required for export to places like the Middle East is something of far better quality. You can only export a cow meat that is between one-and-a-half to two years.
So, you have to have an economy built around the livestock. Now, so for us, the focus is to stay the course on economic empowerment because all that has happened with the challenge of insecurity over the years is to impoverish the people.
And once the people do not have the economic stamina, you know, they easily cave in and they become victims, you know. But we are encouraging dialogue. We had an interface with some of the Fulani leaders about a month ago, and we are beginning to educate them. Last week, we sent a team of security personnel and tractors to go and cultivate land that the IDPs had abandoned because they are being chased out of their community. The security personnel were fired at, seriously. They opened shots at them and they had to retreat and then reinforced.
So, we have that story scattered all over the state. To tell you that, look, it’s not about farmers-herders clash. And I keep challenging that narrative.
How serious is the state government taking the fight against insecurity?
Now, I do appreciate the challenge that some of our security chiefs are facing in Abuja because what they get is not first-hand information. And that’s why I’m an unrepentant advocate of state police because certainly what we are dealing with is beyond what they stay in Abuja to imagine. Yesterday, I had a security briefing from the security chiefs here and they are constrained in many respects. And that’s why it is always better to deal with security locally, you know. So, we must have security federalism, if you want to call it that, so that we can democratise access to security. Somebody cannot sit in Abuja and know what is happening in a remote village, in one of my local governments. But I want to say this to the glory of God. We sat down to analyse the security challenge and we found that Plateau State was even one of the safest in North-central Nigeria. Because what is happening in many of the North-central states now is alarming. In fact, the worst-case scenario we had was in a local government called Wase, where you have a grazing reserve. There is a vast forest land around Wase that shares border with Taraba State, with Gombe State, with Bauchi State. And this has become a den for them. But a lot of that has been reduced in the last two, three months. And that’s why we are planning to restart grazing within the Wase grazing reserve. We are collaborating with the security agencies, because if we don’t reclaim the land, we will not be able to improve our fortunes.
And we are reviewing the security situation. I’ve asked the security agencies to check a bit of news that some of the bandits within that belt, at least, 20 of them went for Hajj this year. You must have read that one or two of such bandits were apprehended, because the economy of kidnapping is a buoyant economy.
And we are seeing how we puncture it as well. And so, the security challenge, for me, the first matter to deal with the security challenge is an honest conversation. Because once you have a mischaracterization of the reasons behind the conflicts, you are not going to apply the right solutions. And that’s why it has not only been sustained, it has almost engulfed the entire country, as we are talking today. And it is not the creation of Mr. President. Because, again, sometimes people try to bring politics into this thing to set me up against the president.
To what extent are you working collaboratively with security agencies and how do you get information about security situation in your state?
I rely on the security chiefs. But what we have developed at the state level, and I can tell you very much all the governments, is that beyond the conventional security agencies, we’ve tried to develop other channels of communication that give us real-time information on what is actually happening on ground. I may not be as bullish as my colleague in Borno State, who sometimes is very confrontational with the security agencies. But we have our own way of passing the message. Because there’s a lot happening with the security agencies. In many respects, some of them have overstayed on the field, so they are demoralised. Some of them are depressed. Some of them have seen too many bad things. They are human beings. And we try to find a way to encourage them. We try to find a way to boost their morale and make sure that they see themselves as defenders of the people. But again, sometimes, it would look like the ogas at the top look at this thing as if it’s a peacekeeping force. Thank God we identified Boko Haram as enemies of state. And if you don’t characterise some of these other elements as enemies of state, the ferocity with which you pursue them is going to be reduced. So, we would continue to manage the situation to the best of our ability. And I thank God that despite all the challenges we are facing, we are pressing on to make life better for our people.
How have you been dealing with the issue of illegal mining in the state?
As you know, mining began in Nigeria here on the Plateau in 1903. The colonial masters exploited this fully. And it was one of the major contributors to the GDP in the First Republic. Tin and columbite; but we’ve gone beyond that. But it will interest you to know that with all the mining activity that has taken place, what we have done is to scratch the surface. We have never really gone into industrial mining. And so, a lot of illegalities have developed around that sector over the years, which has led to the death of many people. Because the safety standards are yet to be fully enforced. And that’s why some months ago we suspended mining activities so that we put some order into the sector. We are losing a lot of people in those illegal mining pits, unfortunately. And alongside that is that many of the activities that are carried out in that sector are shrouded in secrecy. So, if they were properly declared, we would be able to earn more revenue in terms of derivation. But that’s why we want to be able to put a modicum of order into that sector. So far, the records from real minerals extracted from Nigeria and exported, are scattered here and there. They are yet to really be put into the national database so that we can know exactly how much. So, a lot of individuals are profiting and profiteering from the mineral resources. A lot of foreigners have come into the state who are doing a lot of illegal activities. And some of the fallouts from mining activities, you find girl child prostitution is going on. You find that young men are dropping out of school because of quick money. And these are evils we are trying to tackle. But it’s a sector we believe that can add to our revenue base in the years to come. We are also participating as a state because we’ve also registered our own Plateau Mineral Development Company. So, we want to also be players in the sector and see how we can bring benefit to our people. The third economic driver for us is tourism. We’ve often talked about Plateau State as a home of peace and tourism. And we’ve only been talking about potential, potential, potential. But we are making sure that we go beyond potential. And we are looking at all the facets of tourism, medical tourism, sports tourism, cultural tourism, you know, sites of interest, which we have in abundance. We are trying to develop that sector. And what we are doing is that we are collaborating with international organisations to come up, first of all, with a tourism master plan, which should form the basis of what we want to do in the years to come. One of the things that we’ve noticed here is that there has been an upsurge in people coming into the state. One evidence of that is room occupation in our hotels, which is one of the highest, I can tell you, in this part of the country. Sometimes, you come in just suddenly into Jos, you will find no hotel to sleep, especially at weekends, because, as you know, this is the transit route to the North East. So, a lot of people going to the North East break their journeys here on the Plateau. They either go home and come and stop over in Jos or they stop over in Jos before they continue. So, there’s a lot that is happening. There are lots of activities going on. That’s why we are renovating our two flagship hotels. Those of you who know Plateau before, we had the Hill Station Hotel, which is one of the legacy hotels in this country.
It used to be owned by Nigeria Hotels, but it’s now property of Plateau State substantially because we have about 75 percent of the shares. Then, we’re also renovating, rebuilding rather, the Plateau Hotels, which is exclusively owned by Plateau State Government. The good thing is that these are private initiatives, public-private partnerships (PPP). We are not putting public money from the treasury into those assets.
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