As part activities to mark his first one hundred days in office, Governor Simon Bako Lalong recently held an interaction with the press. On the occasion which was also his first organised media outing since his inauguration on May 29, Lalong spoke on a wide range of issues including speculations on appointments and the accumulated debts of the state government. More importantly, he used the occasion to review the efforts of his administration to respond to urgent public matters in the state, and provide the perspective of his programme of action. UKANDI ODEY reports
Sir, why is Plateau State excluded from the first set of beneficiaries of the bailout funds to state governments considering the huge salary arrears that you met on ground?
Plateau is one of the states that made request to Mr. President for intervention. When we got there, he said I have seen your debt profile of one hundred and something billion. What are you going to do? He further directed us to go and investigate to ascertain the actual figure. Indeed, it was more than that. For the bailout, we would have been among the eleven states to access it. After fulfilling the requirements, you have to get approval from the House of Assembly, and from the State executive council. We submitted our request for bailout but unfortunately one bank did something. As they were processing and concluding, the bank wrote that we have not concluded agreement with them. So, Plateau state was withdrawn from the bailout. That is how Plateau was withdrawn from the first list because a bank came out to say we have not reconciled with them. But between us and that bank, we reconciled with them, the bank even gave us facilities after that; but I am sure it was because we transferred one account from that bank to another and the bank was not happy.
After fulfilling the requirements, the bank went at the dying minute and told the Debt Management Office that we have not reconciled with them. We came back again but the bank said it was a mistake. We made another application believing that we have all agreed; but when we got to the last stage, the bank again withdrew the money that was given to us, also tampered with the figure that was given to the Debt Management Office. That was what affected us; not that we are not ready to take the bailout. Even without bailout, I am informed that we have paid six months salaries. So it is not our intention to delay salaries.
Just last week, some Permanent Secretaries were demoted and others retired from the civil service. What is responsible for this action that is generating ripples in some quarters?
There were cases where some Permanent Secretaries were wrongly appointed. The rule is that when you are appointing Permanent Secretary in respect to the civil service, you have to follow a tradition of seniority; but what we saw was that many of those whom the government did not like their faces were not promoted, You imagine somebody on level 16 will be ignored; and they would go and appoint somebody on level 12 as Permanent Secretary! And those people are still hanging in the civil service. Ours is to do justice.
The first case we had was the case of the Head of Service. She was the most senior person but for one reason or the other she was denied promotion and appointment to that position. We brought her in and gave her Head of Service. We saw so many of those cases in the civil service where juniors were appointed above their superiors. Those were some of the things that we rectified. We also looked at the local government and we discovered that there are many of those seniors in the local government, So, what were the criteria used for appointing junior over senior? What we did was to ask the junior to step down for the seniors.
What I did was to pick the most senior person from each local government as Permanent Secretary no matter his or her political lineage. As a government, when you come in, you need to investigate things around you. Many of them are already answering charges before the EFCC, some were on bail – a lot of the Permanent Secretaries were on bail for investigation. So, we look at such cases, if we see that your case is a very serious one and is likely to affect us if we leave you, we retire such fellow. Some of them were retired; and we demoted those that were wrongly appointed.
Sir, assets declaration is part of the steps toward ensuring probity and accountability in governance. Have you declared your assets?
I and my deputy declared our assets before the Public Complaints Commission and the Code of Conduct Bureau. It is now left for them to go and publish the assets. When they said we should publish it, I asked ‘publish it where?’ If you gave it to the Code of Conduct, it is for public consumption. I am not aware of any law stopping them from publishing assets as declared. It is their responsibility to do so whenever they desire to do so. If they publish mine like that of President Muhammadu Buhari, many people will be shocked of my declaration.
Sir, 100 days after your inauguration, the State Executive Council is yet to be constituted. What is responsible for this?
We have people that are waiting for political appointments; but we inherited a huge debt and salary arrears. We didn’t want to add to that immediately. Even those that have been appointed are not on salary yet. None of us has been captured for salary; but I told them let us bear with the civil servants and clear all the outstanding salaries before any appointment or drawing of salaries. When we get our bailout, all the salaries would be paid and then we would know our capacity to appoint people – people should bear with us. Mr. President is also showing us good example in this regard. As party men, we always want to take a cue from the president. We don’t want to rush. If the President is taking his time to do something, we would also follow the pattern, so that we don’t make mistakes.
There are allegations of complicity and compromise of security men deployed to curb the crisis in the Northern part of the state precisely in Barki nLadi and Riyom local government areas. What is your government doing to arrest the situation?
Security compromises in local government: I have also heard about this but each time we ask them to come and prove it, nobody would come up. In security meetings, we gave such information; we have had several changes within the security set up because of such rumours. If you go to Barakin Ladi, they would say it is the STF. Despite the changes, people are still being killed. I want to say that if anybody has evidence that the security have compromised their position, come and tell us, I will take it up with the Security Council and they would know what to do. Above all, let us have confidence in the security; they are here to protect everybody. We are doing our best to arrest the insecurity in BarakinLadi and Riyom local government areas.
Sometime what I read in the papers are not true reflections of the happenings. I heard that before we came on board, security men were not being paid their allowances. How do you ensure security when there is no motivation? After our inauguration, we quickly embarked on the payment of their allowances and assured them that they would not miss any month without their allowances. Based on the problem in Barakin Ladi, we made a request and the President assented to our request and sent in additional of 150 mobile policemen to Barakin Ladi. I want to say that contrary to what people are saying that the state government is not serious about the insecurity in the state, on this issue alone, I have taken my representative to the President about four times and he has been doing his best; he has not relented in his efforts to curb the situation. We are also pleading with Mr. President to treat the Plateau situation like that of the North East, so that we can access some special funds. If we can get this, it would help to mobilize more security men.
There are general complaints of illegal deduction of local government funds by state government and the solution proffered by many is local government autonomy. Do you subscribe to this?
Local government autonomy is a constitutional matter; but here in Plateau, with or without local government autonomy, I have told some people that for me, since May 29 that we came in, we have not tampered with local government funds. I don’t tamper with local government funds; I don’t attend JAC meeting. I have said it several times. Whatever is due to them will be given to them. I am one of those fighting against tampering with local government money. If local governments have money, development would be at the grassroots and reduce the pressure on the state.
When are you likely to conduct local government elections since the elected ones have been dissolved?
We have a case in court after the dissolution. So we are also waiting for the court to decide. When the court decides, we would conduct elections. There are four different cases over this. Some of them in the Federal High Court and others in regular High Court. We are appealing to the judiciary to expedite action so that those cases would be resolved. Immediately they are resolved, we would go back to the State Assembly to have proper law that would enable us to conduct good elections.
Sir, the Fulani are complaining of marginalisation or rather want their representatives in your government. What are you doing to ensure equal representation of various ethnic groups in our government?
When we were campaigning, we went through the 53 ethnic nationalities in Plateau State. We gave them assurance that each of them would be included in government. We have not started appointments. The little we have done is to ensure that government functions; there are special assistants, special advisers and others that would be appointed, Board and parastatals are also there, commissioners are coming up, federal appointments are coming up. We would soon have a meeting with the stakeholders. By that we would be able to get representation from all the ethic nationalities on the Plateau.
