March 10, (THEWILL)- During a condolence visit by the PDP Governors’ Forum to Governor Caleb Mutfwang at Government House, Rayfield, Jos, on February 1, 2024, the Chairman of the forum and Governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, described and referred to their host as ‘the miracle governor.’
The metaphor, or compressed simile, is well earned and well placed. Nineteen days earlier, Governor Mutfwang survived a tortuous, excruciating and well-orchestrated ambush by political desperados who sought to thwart the will of the people when the Supreme Court upheld his election as impeccable and valid in law and electoral order. Many, including his own, had lost faith and did not see him emerging victorious at the Supreme Court.
This was after a cycle of violent attacks on villages in the central and northern parts of the state that did not only engage the new administration in more than proportionate measures, but constituted such a costly distraction that many feared the machinery of government and its chassis would capitulate, collapse, and even surrender.
The inauguration of the Caleb Mutfwang Administration, it would appear, was a turbulent and troubled inheritance stretching from a looted and empty public treasury to a depleted and decimated work force, high debt profile, a traumatised and despairing population in need of leadership and direction, to the management of bloodshed, killings, mass burials, a surging wave of refugees and internally displaced persons and an humongous humanitarian crisis that caught the attention of international concern, commentary, and condemnation.
It is remarkable that the Mutfwang administration did not collapse, or succumb, or lose focus in the wake and rage of the trials. Rather – or as it appears, the challenges of the earliest beginning has sharpened his focus and strengthened his resolve to provide leadership in fact and indeed.
After the celebrated Supreme Court judgement that affirmed his populist electoral victory and the political masterstroke orchestrated during the February 3 rerun Jos North Senatorial District and Jos North/Bassa federal constituency elections that extinguished the opposition beyond recognition and redemption, the Mutfwang governmental rollercoaster appears to have consolidated from steaming to cruising.
The administration has taken a functional stock of the environmental needs of the State, and has started implementing the policy of completing uncompleted projects inherited from past administrations. Thus, there is a massive revamping and redefinition of roads, bridges, and layouts within the Jos-Bukuru metropolis. The programme has seen to the renewal of roads and streets, and the reconstruction of some that had collapsed and remained derelict, and a nightmare for residents of those areas.
There is a revolutionary stride in the transportation subsector of the state economy. One is the revitalisation of rail metro service; a development that has thrown residents of Jos and its environs into a frenzy as they recall and report that the last time a mobile train was experienced and sighted in Jos was some forty two years ago – in 1982! The resuscitation of train transportation has also led to the renewal and upgrading of train transportation paraphernalia such as the tracks, train stations, and the railway terminal or main station.
A corollary of this transportation boost is the rebirth and reintroduction of the Tin city metro bus service. In the first effort, the Government has procured fourteen fully air-conditioned, 88-passenger capacity luxurious buses that are to begin operation along eight defined routes within the Jos Metropolis. This itself is a development with far-reaching implications for the local economy. One is that the famous Terminus Market, gutted down by fire twenty two years ago in 2002, and about which the immediate past administration dissipated huge budgets without meaningful results, will receive a face lift. In a plan announced by the Secretary to the government of the State during an interface with traders last week, part of the old moribund market ground will be converted and built into the terminal of the revitalised metro bus service. Accordingly, the traders who are currently occupying the premises of the burnt market illegally, by mutual engagement and consent, are to move inwards to allow work begin and for the Terminal to come alive.
Governor Mutfwang has been passionate about the state of education too, as he has always noted that not paying the required attention to quality education is a sure way to emasculate the future of the state. This has seen to critical tincturing of the administrative echelons in the state-owned tertiary institutions with the appointments of a vice chancellor, provost, rector for the state university, college of education, and polytechnic respectively.
From all intents and purposes, as governor of Plateau State, Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang is on a mission: if he cannot perform better than those yet to come, he must collapse and obliterate the records of achievements of those before him. In any case, his ultimate is to make Plateau a global destination for excellence and quality life. This explains the interlink and interface of his seven-point agenda, hoping that he will achieve his quest to resolve the cycle of violence and humanitarian crisis that have been part of the bane of development in the State in recent times.
It is hoped that the National Assembly will be through with constitutional reforms that will allow the establishment of State Police as intervention in the growing security challenges of the country. In the meantime, Mutfwang has repositioned the State’s own local security outfit, Operation Rainbow, which has been working mostly to complement intelligence gathering for the security organs that have been working in the State.
Thus far, his foreign trips and engagements have been to explore the latest in terms of technology and skills to harness and deploy the resources that abound in Plateau. According to sources in Government, there are plans by the government, after conducting appropriate soil investigation and veracity tests, to massively introduce cash crops seedlings into the State’s farming space, and encourage mass produce and exportation of agricultural produce in no distant future.
The resettlement of displaced persons as a result of recurrent attacks and crises is a programme aimed at restoring the native population to their farmlands, and to boost the confidence of the farming population towards food security.
On Wednesday this week, the Plateau State Governor will turn fifty nine years old. At 59, Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang, is certainly on the eve of a jubilee. After overcoming enemy machinations and ambushes on the way to Government House, he is also in the eve of destiny to become the leader he has always dreamt to become, one who managed the 53 ethno-cultural groups in Plateau to a unity of purpose by terminating myths and demystifying mythologies to found a modern Plateau where crisis, killings, and all humanitarian and sectarian upheavals shall become anathema.
