Simon Bako Lalong is the Governor of Plateau State. In this interview with the Chairman, Editorial Board of The Nation, Sam Omatseye and Legal Editor, John Austin Unachukwu, he shares his views on the challenges of governance, how he has managed the Fulani herders and farmers’ clashes in Plateau State and other sundry national issues. Excerpts:
WHAT is your assessment of the challenges and things you have been able to do so far in office? Well, we thank God for the opportunity. When we look at how we came in, we start our assessment from what we saw on ground. And I will say that when I came in as the Governor of Plateau State, the whole state was in total confusion. There was dead civil service and we found the state in crises. And so the main news at the front burner then was crises; how many people were killed on a daily basis and then civil servants were not paid salaries for 10 months, 11 months in some cases like that of teachers and about nine months for pensioners. But the most important thing was how to cope with the crises in the state at that time, because killings were going on here and there. Killings were on-going on daily basis and there were crises everywhere. Plateau was a no-go area. As a matter of fact, people were not following Plateau as transit route, people were no longer passing through Plateau State. Those who had Plateau as their transit route had to find a way to avoid going through Plateau State.
What do you mean by this?
Imagine a Bauchi man would go through Kano; a Gombe man will have to go through Maiduguri because Plateau was a no-go area. Right inside Plateau itself, some areas were no go areas. You don’t go to area A because you are a Christian or go through area B because you are a Muslim. So, how to contend with that situation was a big challenge and of course, the worst was that we inherited a zero account.
How much did you inherit?
What they gave us was just N95million. How do we go about this, so assessment would have to start from there? First you have to contend with the crises; secondly you have to see how to pay civil servants because at that time, everybody was an angry man. So, the civil servants were not there, the secretariat was just closed; nobody was going to work. How to bring back the workers and also pay them the backlog of arrears of salary was part of the problem. To the glory of God, within three months we were able to contain with the crises; we brought in people together and it was resolved, no more killings.
How did you achieve this feat because you just made it look so easy? The contention was that there was this issue of settlers and the Igbo, the Hausas and so on, we also had political dimensions to it, what really went into it as a matter of fact?
Well, I think that the issues of the Plateau were really complicated. In 2001, there was this crisis which was a little bit religious, of a worship place that led to a crisis; the one that came up again was on the issue of elections, and part of it was a carry-over of an election in a local government area. And that election of a local government took us more than five years of crises.
Why was that local government contentious?
The local government was contentious because in 2001, there were two aspirants one who was a Christian and the other who was a Muslim. One was saying look; I am an indigene and was claiming that the other one was not an indigene but a settler. So this settler confusion in Jos North is very tough and at that time to do the election was something else. That time I was the Speaker of the State House of Assembly and the recommendation then was not to conduct an election and the two aspirants were still struggling. Christians were saying no, we must support this one and Muslims were saying no and before you know it, ethnicity turned into a religious war. Now at the end of the day, while the conflict was going on, we made recommendations that the two candidates should be banned. Either you suspend the candidates or no election would be conducted. So, as the move was going on, crises came up and I believe that the crisis was as a result of the conflict that was going on. And the background to the crisis was that Muslims were worshipping and a Christian woman was passing and cursing them, the rest is what the security agencies will tell you.
What happened since that time in respect of the elections?
So after that time, there was no election again, it was now an interim arrangement, a caretaker committee was put in place. Now, a subsequent government came, and part of the report was that at that time, it was dangerous to do any election because the anger was still there but the man said no, we must conduct election. He conducted election, did their primaries and then went into election and the result or outcome of the election was what led to crises and killings because that day of election was something else in Plateau State; because of the religious background, it turned into a religious conflict. It was either religious or ethnic and from one local government it was spilling over within the northern zone. And so when it got to the far bush, it now became a Fulani and a Berom affair. So, that is how it turned down into a fight between farmers and herdsmen. So, you see cattle rustling, you see killings, you see destruction of farmlands on daily basis and killing and destruction of villages. So that was what we inherited at that time but the one we got lingering was this farmers and the herdsmen crisis and it was strictly mostly between the Beroms and the Fulanis. The conflict had gone too far, so one thing I did was to try to bring the two warring factions together. We brought them together, had several dialogues with them and at the end of the day, they resolved among themselves that they were ready for peace, set up committees within themselves and then I put in the structure.
They did it alone or with the support of the state government?
I nominated people from the government side to also sit down and broker peace. Up to this moment, the committee is still there and is still working. From there, they set up the guidelines for themselves, they said no more cattle rustling, they said no more destruction of farmlands, no more grazing in the nights, no entering anyhow, you must follow certain routes, so within themselves, they created that and within the communities themselves it was agreed that part of the role of the government was to also run an all-inclusive governance, all-inclusive because this community would complain that in the last administration we were not involved, it was not tolerant to this people, we lack this infrastructure, so we took all of that, of course you know that I was a Speaker in the year 2001 when commissions were set up. So many commissions and I studied some of the reports of these commissions and picked up some of the recommendations of these commissions and because of that, we now brought out our own guidelines as to how to assist and resolve these conflicts .
For instance, the all-inclusive governance thing, we set up machinery and we captured all the 53 ethnic nationalities on the Plateau and we ensure that all the ethnic nationalities must be captured in government, mainly in appointments and elections. Some of them were elected, so in capturing them, we ensured that key and large ethnic groups were all accommodated in government. As it is now, you will find all the 53 ethnic groups on the Plateau now while they were going on because that had been the attitude of the past administration, when you set up a commission, when you set up this machinery for dialogue, after that what else, you wait until another crises, and what we did was that we said that we must have a long lasting means of settling these conflicts; we set up an agency by law called Peace and Conflicts Resolution Agency and that is the only one in the country now. It is like the Peace and Reconciliation Committee at the national.
Why did you back it up by law?
We set up that committee by law we didn’t want it to be by appointment because if you do it by appointment, it will stay for a while and die. When you turn back, somebody will just come and dissolve it; so we said no, this must be manned by independent people, experts in that field of life who will now collect some of these resolutions and begin to implement them. Get flash points where there are crises and find out how to address those issues before we see crises again in the state. So, we brought somebody from the university. He is now the D-G of the Peace and Conflicts Management Bureau.
What was the role of the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in all these efforts?
So with the Peace and Conflicts Management and all the Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that work in the Plateau came in, because when we had that prolonged crises so many people were coming in; so many Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the NGOs were coming in to assist. But unfortunately they were not given the opportunity to help. I know of an NGO, Humanitarian Dialogue that has been here but when I came in, they said look, we wanted to help but the last administration did not give us the opportunity to help. So, I brought them in and said you now have the opportunity to help and they worked very hard. It is the same group that I recommended to Governor Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna State. They went there, they did a lot of things; I brought them back again.
So together with all the NGOs, we worked very hard and that was how we got peace on the Plateau. Then you cannot have peace on an empty stomach, of course then you get back to the civil servants, they were all there very angry. So, what we did with them was to assure them that we must do our best to address the arrears of salary.
So what did you do about this?
What we did was to bring back the teachers. I reengaged about 2000 of the teachers, those who were dismissed, those were thrown out; we brought them back to service. In addition to this, we found that number inadequate, we advertised for teachers and we are presently doing interview to re-engage additional 2000 teachers for primary schools in the state.
Here it has always been a tradition that you don’t continue the programmes and projects of a previous administration. So, to save costs and also to make sure that the projects that were there for the people were completed, in fact, I took the first two years of my administration to complete ongoing projects, projects that were started by the last administration. So all the projects that were started by the past administration, we completed them and introduced new ones.
Recently you imposed curfew in the state, what really happened?
We imposed curfew on two occasions, the first reason we imposed curfew was when there was this IPOB problem. When there was the IPOB problem, we had a security report of what was going to happen in Jos. Some criminals wanted to capitalize on it; they had a meeting overnight and said that they were going to start destroying lives and property that belong to the people from the South-East and that they will start killing people from the South-East. So, what I did was to rush and impose a curfew in the state. When we did that, we saw the advantage of imposing curfew. Because apart from one or two people who ran into the hoodlum and were unfortunately killed, that helped us to maintain peace. Because I said that Plateau belonged to everybody, whoever lives here and is a law abiding citizen, will be protected by the government. So, we did that and it worked for us very well and we had no problem. And then after that, I must state that the time that we noe set out to start preparation for Local Government elections in the State, from the day we issued the requisite notices for Local Government elections, then we started seeing criminality rearing its head again. You wake up today and you hear that they have killed one person and that person was killed in reprisal attack. Second day you hear that they killed another person in so, so and so place and then another reprisal attack. Just how it started before, but fortunately for us we put a lot of measures on ground and from the report I have received from the security agents, I am very comfortable with it because a lot of arrests were made and investigations are going on and I am very comfortable with the type of investigations that are going on now. At the end of the day, I am sure that they are going to bring out their report about what is going on. Even the criminals themselves have started running away because they are beginning to realise that security is going after those who are involved in this criminality.
A lot of criminality, you have a gang of people, they go to an area just like the way they were doing cattle rustling, cattle rustling was a business but here we stopped it because of the understanding we had earlier with the stakeholders. Even before the law, the Beroms had a very good understanding with the Fulanis; we never saw cattle rustling again in this state. Nobody was rustling cows again and that minimized the destruction of farmlands because they set the rules for themselves. You cannot graze in the night because if you send people to graze in the night they go into farmlands they accepted, you cannot destroy farmlands, they accepted, you cannot go and be putting chemicals on the grasses so that cows will die after eating them, they accepted. They created routes for themselves and said no, within this area, this is where you pass when you are grazing, they accepted; so we had peace, but these ones that are coming had some elements of criminality, high time criminals coming in different shades with the sole purpose of putting the state back to into crisis but thank God that within a very short time, we were able to address that and are on top of the situation because if you put crisis in Plateau State, there will be no development in the state but when you have peace in the state, you don’t need to tell investors to come and invest in the state.
Several months salaries were owed the civil servants before you came in, what is the state of affairs in that respect now and how did you get there?
Yes, when we came in we realised that the civil servants were owed about nine to 10 months’ salary. So the first thing we did before swearing in because that was the condition given to us by the civil servants during the campaigns, that they would not resume, because before we came in they were already on indefinite strike in the state for over six months. So we asked them what do you want us to do? They said well, if you will get money from wherever, we must get two months’ salaries before your swearing in because we don’t trust government. Go and look for two months’ salary for us, we supported you, we voted for you, but go and get us two months’ salary. I had to go to look for where to get money. We got money, paid them two months’ salary and they resumed work.
How have you managed this incidence of Fulani cattle herders and farmers clashes in Plateau State?
Part of the problems we inherited in the Plateau was this farmers and herdsmen issue. So, we looked at it and realised that part of the solution to these problems was to introduce ranches. Fortunately for us at the Nigerian Governors Forum, the President in his attempt to look for solution for this issue asked of a report of a committee set up by the past administration, the administration of President Jonathan to address this issue. That committee was headed by the former Governor of Benue State, Gabriel Suswan. They brought the same report back to us at the National Economic Council and said look, this was the report to address the issue of farmers and herdsmen crises and we saw the recommendations at that report, the recommendation was to adopt the ranching policy. So when it was agreed, we all adopted it; so many of us agreed that we should go by the recommendation because land is no more available for the people, the issue of routes is not there, there are lots of conflicts you cannot even get the routes, and then this any how grazing is causing a lot of conflicts here and there. So the Ministry of Agriculture was to address the issue, and the Ministry of Agriculture met with the CBN and they said yes, to address the issue of grazing, this is what we should do and I remember the President saying don’t force people to do the policy; let it be on the basis of those who want to go into it so states that would like to go into ranching would then apply and go into it because all you need to do is provide pieces of land and then the FGN will assist in developing the land. And then the scheme will continue, that is the pilot scheme.
Do you mean that you went into the scheme?
Yes, Plateaus State went into it, in the whole of the North Central zone we adopted it; I applied for it as it is there in the policy. When you adopt the policy, you go into the pilot scheme then you access the funding from the CBN for the purpose of establishing the ranch. But the key issue is don’t force anybody into it. We adopted it, we brought it down, we didn’t force anybody into it; we took about two months having consultations on the Plateau because I set up a committee headed by a professor, onetime Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Onazi, so it was the Onazi Committee. The Onazi Committee went to Abuja, under studied it with all other stakeholders involved because civil societies were there, the Christian Association were there, the JNI were there, women were there and there were all sectors representation. So, by the time they came back after understudying it at the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, they all recommended that we must adopt this policy of ranching but that we must do consultation with the people. We took two months to do consultation. There was no segment of the society that we did not consult; we started from the traditional rulers, we did with religious leaders, we did with National Assembly members, we did with key stakeholders in the state, the elders, and we ended up with the National Assembly members because some National Assembly members were on air saying that we shouldn’t go into this and that we shouldn’t go into it but at the end of the day, when it was addressed and we came into a meeting, Plateau people adopted ranching. So, it is now left for the government to implement it. Government is still waiting for the implementation of the policy because we were always in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture to know what is happening about ranching when this issue about Anti-grazing came up; when they started hearing about anti-grazing here and anti-grazing there, people started saying why not do ant-grazing bill here and anti-grazing bill there, so what I did was to say no, we had done consultation and Plateau. When I read what they call Anti Open Grazing Law, in some of the laws I didn’t see the word anti grazing. There was nothing like anti grazing law, but people concluded and said that that was what the law is saying, talking about anti open grazing. For me, I don’t want to use the word Anti, anti what? For us, we adopted the ranching policy as a life stock policy to encourage people to participate in it and not against any ethnic group.
What was the position of the Fulanis then?
When we had the meeting both the Fulanis and other ethnic groups accepted that they wanted the ranching policy, so what is this noise all about. We all agreed here on the Plateau, we have some little delays from the ministry but however, we have prepared our laws. As a matter of fact, very soon, we are presenting the law before the State House of Assembly on ranching and if you look at the laws, they are not really different from what I saw in some states because I read the law from Ekiti State, the one from Taraba State and the one from Benue State. And I saw that they are all about ranching; may be it is the nomenclature that changed. We stand for ranching; we have record of all the consultations we made here on the Plateau. Half of Plateau State stand for ranching; it is not only one tribe that is doing grazing here in Plateau State. We have so many tribes who are into grazing, open grazing for that matter. In our own case, what we want to do is not to chase anybody, but to organise them in such a way that it is now run according to rules and no more taking your livestock here and there, destroying farmlands. Farms have to be protected by law from the House of Assembly.
What is noticeable here is that there seems to be great understanding between the Fulanis, the Beroms and other ethnic groups who are involved in this issue of farming and animal rearing here in the Plateau.
