Saturday, March 11, 2023, is judgement day for the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration in Plateau State. It is a date many citizens have anxiously waited for with so much expectation and high hopes.
As things stand, the inevitable verdict of the people is bound to be justifiably, proportionately, damning. The long-term outcome shall be the rebirth of the state and its citizens.
The past eight years of the APC have left in their wake a forlorn populace and a devastated landscape devoid of the kind of development other states of the federation have experienced.
Plateau State citizens have never before been subjected to the kind of rudderless leadership, accompanied by an almost complete absence of infrastructural, economic and social development, the way the current APC administration has done.
Today, it has the negative distinction of being the fourth poorest in the country. You see this in every corner of the state.
The tragedy of the state is best appreciated when it is also realised that the Lalong government has so far incurred a debt of more than N200 billion – one of the largest in the entire country. And there is virtually nothing on ground to show for it!
This sort of bleak record is vastly replicated in other sectors of the economy, governance and general administration of the state.
The full extent of the damage the APC administration has wrought will only become clearer when the next governor takes office. They have substantially succeeded in reducing the stat to a shadow of its once glorious and robust self.
The APC government here loves to flamboyantly tout itself as The Rescue Administration. By the way they have misapplied and corrupted this concept, it is either they accidentally picked this fanciful notion by the road side or they never got the hang of what its original fabricator had in mind.
Whichever way, it has become apparent that Plateau State never needed rescuing in the first. Since it set out on this self-serving and delusional mission, the APC administration has, rather, plundered and destroyed the immense and palpable gains made by its predecessor.
It is Governor Lalong himself and his misguided administration that are in dire need of rescuing. They have completely lost all sense of direction and cannot find the way out of this stifling morass into which they have dragged the state.
Today, a majority of the people who are not blinded by their political allegiances to the APC are yearning for a return to those good old days of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Broken promises, outright lies, fabrications and missed opportunities are some of the derelict mementoes the APC administration will leave for Plateau people. Citizens are still asking about the 400 tractors the government said it procured in its first tenure.
No one has seen one of them. So local farmers still toil on their farms using the most rudimentary tools and methods, reminiscent of their forebears in the 1960s. The state’s huge comparative advantages in the areas of Irish potatoes, cabbage, carrots and exotic fruits production have been squandered.
The Agriculture Services and Training Centres (ASTC), which was the touchstone of the Jonah Jang (PDP) administration’s agrarian revolution, has been systematically destroyed by the APC. They could not simply sustain the incredible vision and determination that went into bringing cutting edge Israeli technology to bear on the state’s mainly subsistence agricultural sector.
That phenomenal quantum leap, which became the benchmark for other states, even the Federal Government, has been brutally killed.
Questions are still being asked about the humongous loan facility said to have been procured for the completion of the Olympic size Zaria Road stadium, which has remained uncompleted. But because this administration does not care a bit about accountability and transparency, nothing will be known about this shady deal until a new government takes over. The same with the mysterious case of the 400 tractors.
The APC’s attack on, and disregard for the rule of law, is unmatched in the political history of the state. They orchestrated the wholesale exclusion of the main opposition PDP in the 2021 local government election which it went on to ‘win’ in all of the 17 local government areas of the state.
In October 2021, the same party masterminded the impeachment of the Speaker of the state legislature by six of its twenty four members. That move has remained controversial.
The Speaker had dared to question the governor’s sincerity in the fight against herdsmen’s bloody attacks on indigenous communities of the state. The APC found that offensive and contrary to its code of conduct and moved against the Speaker. The scars have refused to heal.
The presidential election has come, gone and left its sour taste in the mouths of majority of Nigerians. But that should neither dampen their morale nor deter them from performing Saturday’s necessary exercise of purgation, especially in Plateau State.
Citizens should trudge on with determination. Purge this APC scourge that has sucked the life out of the state so perniciously in the last eight years. It is now stranded, motionless, in the national race towards greatness.
The people must return to that golden era where the overall good and interests of the masses are the overriding concerns of government.
For Plateau APC, here comes your inevitable Ides of March – the damning verdict of the people.
