You have been on the campaign train of the governor since it took off some weeks back, what is your impression?
I think the reception has been overwhelming; in fact I was personally shocked by the large turnout. I did not know that we have that ground swell of support until we went out. Everywhere we entered, people turned out massively to receive us. It started in Shendam where we kicked off the whole campaign; the whole town was jam packed with people from all works of life turning up to receive the PDP candidates led by the governor. So it has been a very exciting time for the campaign council, this two weeks. And of course one of the remarkable things I noticed is that everywhere we went, even non-state actors, non-political actors like the traditional institutions, fall beside themselves to give Jang titles, as their own way of expressing their support for the administration. I have never seen it; I have being in several campaign rallies before, Jang has accumulated almost 10 to 15 traditional titles. It is a way of showing support for the enormous development that he has brought to these areas. So it has been a very great time for the PDP in this state.
What is the thrust of the campaign?
We call it redemption phase one, which has to do with the massive re-construction you have seen in the state. The construction of roads, schools, health facilities, agricultural facilities all over the zones in this state, so in line with that, redemption phase two is the consolidation of these. You know that one can’t do things all at one go, so having seen what the government has offered in the first phase, people turned out en masse because they are expecting more from the Jang administration. They know that this is a man that does not play with public funds, they know that this is a man that concentrates on the upliftment of the state and its people. He is not a man that globetrots, he is a man that concentrates on the welfare of his people, so people expect a lot from him. They have seen what he is able to do in three years, the landmarks of the administration, the roads, bridges, etc.
You have not mentioned peace, does that mean as the opposition say it’s not a priority to you?
Peace is a cardinal programme of this administration. In fact it is one of the points in the ten point agenda of the administration. You cannot underestimate the value of peace because peace is crucial to development. The governor talked about peace and unity in every outing. In fact he talks about solidarity amongst the elite group, Plateau citizens etc. That is why you see that his campaign has been very incident free. We have never witnessed any rioting or any display of violence in our campaign because he insists that people must conduct themselves peacefully; he insists that his campaign should be issue-based and should not be abusive and as for the question of making peace and security an issue, violence in Plateau State did not start with this administration. In fact, during the past administration, I was reading your newspaper today and I saw somebody like Joshua Dariye talking about sectarian crisis in Plateau State being inflamed by Jang, that is disingenuous because we know that one of the most protracted crises took place under Joshua Dariye.
It is not as if this administration caused it, and you know if you want to really understand the crisis in Plateau State, you need to take a more historical approach to it. So for anybody to take a simplistic view that it is Jang that is causing this crisis, the person has lost the point completely because there are a number of factors that you have to consider especially in respect to the recent crisis in Jos
But does the governor agree that peace and security are paramount among the needs of the people in Plateau?
Absolutely.
So how do you reconcile that with the way the Jos crisis has been handled in the present dispensation?
The governor has not failed in handling it. People who want offices are just trying to use it against him. And if you really look at it, the so-called opposition elements in Plateau State are part of the crisis themselves because unless you unite your people, it is difficult for you to tackle these issues of peace and security but they deliberately went into a kind of opposition, a kind of cynical opposition that compounded the crisis in Plateau State. Now these are people that were in PDP and for no reason they broke out and formed a faction resisting all the peace moves by the governor until they brought one kind of an improvised, what do you call it, caretaker committee, which was farcical, but that one collapsed, then they went up to appeal court and then on getting there they lost it and then they came and went to Labour Party. Now you expect that they are democrats but they completely violated the constitution of the Labour Party they found there and even flouted the INEC guideline about primaries. They didn’t have any primaries they didn’t have room for such democratic niceties as primaries, they just called some fat old men and say choose our candidates. The result is what you see today. Most of the opposition elements are in disarray, many of them have come back but you see what I am just saying is that, some of this crises in Plateau State were orchestrated by vested interests, by elements with unfathomable political ambition who believe they must get their way through and so, it compounded the crisis, so I do not really think that Jang failed.
In other words you are happy with the way the state governor has tackled the crisis in the state in the past four years?
Reasonably well, especially for a governor that does not command any formation of security, neither police nor army or state security service. He has been able to do fantastically well; he has done his best as a human being.
What about the various strikes in the state?
Thank you very much. You have lived long enough in Plateau State, and you recall that when Jang came to office, the civil servants were on strike. And even at that time, you know the reasons why they were on strike, they were being owed salary arrears for several months. Pensions were not paid for many years, in fact not to talk about leave grants that were never paid, but right now as I speak to you, right up to December last year, Jang has paid every civil servant his salary not beyond the 25th of every month. These are verifiable facts, so he has done very well and cleared all allowances, especially leave grants that were in backlog for several years, he has cleared all those things. He has also started steady payment of pensions, if you ask pensioners they have never had it better than now. So I do not know whether the strike action by workers is a test of popularity or not because as we speak, people say Governor Fashola is one of the best governors in Nigeria but yet in Lagos, doctors and health workers have been on strike for several months and there is no let up, so I don’t know whether you can just use workers’ strike to judge the popularity of a government. They may have issues which are yet to be settled, but I do not think that that constitutes itself as a mark of negativity or positivity on an administration because the case is when the issues are solved this people will go back to work, they go and get all their salaries and all that and business is as usually again. There are many, various factors about strike actions during elections which of course as a journalist you should know. You can see this remarkable coincidence that every time there’s going to be an election you have workers going on strike. Are they really manipulated or genuine? This strike they have embarked upon is not about salary increase or minimum wage per se, it is about something they call relativity. The other time I called some of my workers and asked what this “relativity” is about? In fact many of them don’t really know what this relativity is all about.
The fact remains that they are still at home and it will be a hard sell sir, for you to convince them to vote for somebody who has put them at home for this number of months?
Let me tell you, people know exactly what is going on, many civil servants support Jang because of his approach to the civil service itself. Not only that salaries are being paid but actually work is going on at the secretariat now, not like before when subventions are not given, when overheads are not given in fact when at a point you cannot even find typing sheets in some offices. Critical things that make offices run were not even provided but they are feeling the sense of relevance because they are working and they are collecting their salaries. Because of that many of them support this government, we are confident of that. I have seen it, I have seen some of them even appearing at our rallies and cheering and cheering.
Have you taken time to look at the crowd at the rallies of the opposition? Some say this has made you jittery and the governor is beginning to clamp down on the opposition?
We are not jittery. We know what is happening about this crowd you are talking about, I live a stone throw to Polo field where one of the parties flagged-off its campaigns and I witnessed a lot of fight along this roads because some people said they were promised N5,000 to come for the campaign and they came and they were given N1,000 and so on, they were fighting. We know a lot about hired crowds. We are not intimidated by hired crowds. There are no elements of being jittery at all about our campaign. In fact we are confident, we move confidently and we have the overwhelming support of the people at the grassroots; overwhelming support of non-political actors, I am not just talking about traditional institutions, am also talking about opinion leaders, religious leaders and a lot of people who are not political activists, they support us. So we move from town to town with all confidence.
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Opposition in Plateau is using hired crowd – Ishaku