January 21, (THEWILL) – On the eve of January 12, Plateau State, yet to get over the trauma and threnody of the recent Christmas Eve genocide, was a heavily impregnated socio-political and economic destination, with a huge, combustible potential that the next day, which would be judgement day between the wish of the people and the voice of God on the one hand, and an army of fortune speculators on the other, could go either way – between peace and crisis.
The pre-judgment day brought raging sentiments, permutations, speculations, expectations, gossips, political bad blood and ethnic stereotypes and all, to a feverish pitch. There was palpable and precipitate tension heightened by bitter and vociferous exchanges between the camps of the PDP that had approached the Supreme Court in search of justice, and the APC that was bestriding the same court questing for a judicial approval for a technical knockout in an election it deservedly and genuinely lost.
No time had the community of Plateau State been engaged in such intense and prolonged conversation and debate? The situation saw its demographics splintered into incendiary and tendentious clusters and concentric circles defined by various and varying degree of interest and awareness since November last year when the Appeal court rained its objectionable verdicts on the last elections in Plateau. It was both like the night before the Passover, or, the night of a possible invasion by an enemy and aggressor gang on an unmistakable mission to kill, destroy, and eventually usurp and occupy a people’s heritage. Either way, suppositions and surmises – including uninformed analyses, arm-chair commentaries, jaundiced prognostications, and unschooled constitutionalism and citations, pointed to a possible frenetic ending of a litigation that had stoked as much as it stirred tempests and trepidations.
It was indeed a night of longevity and tendencies before the inevitable and unavoidable morning. At about 2pm of Friday January 12, once Emmanuel Akomaye Agim, JSC, reading the lead judgment in the appeal filed by Governor Caleb Mutfwang and the Peoples Democratic Party against the Appeal Court judgment that quashed his election on the amorphous ground of “no structure”, pronounced that “the appeal is hereby allowed”, pro-Mutfwang celebrations erupted in the Three Arms Zone area of Abuja city centre and in Jos, the Plateau State capital.
In the ensuing moments, a sustained, co-ordinated, collaborative, and corroborative pandemonium dominated by a cacophony and symphony of doxologies and tunes in favour of Mutfwang and the PDP, and acknowledging God for His Hand in ensuring justice and upholding the wishes of the people through the Supreme Court judgement.
At the Heipang Airport in Jos, protocol and order collapsed as the Airport facility was overrun by the surge of supporters and admirers who thronged the Airport to welcome the governor as he made a ‘triumphal entry’ from Abuja after the Supreme Court judgment that affirmed his election as the Executive governor of Plateau State.
From all the seventeen local government areas of Plateau State, loads of lorries and trucks of jubilation clad and chanting supporters apparelled in white and green cap or scarf as appropriate by gender, emptied into the Heipang Airport as early as 9am, as initial information indicated that the Flight conveying Governor Mutfwang and some of the robbed national Assembly members, some cabinet members and protocol staff would touch down at 11.30am penultimate Saturday.
By 12.30pm when the Flight eventually hit the runway and taxied to the embrace of a crowd that was irresistible to any winning politician, and unstoppable by size, force, and intent, it was also obvious that celebration was in the air and everywhere. Security and protocol were humbled and overwhelmed by the weight, extent, and the ubiquitous character and scope of the forging crowd. Adhoc protocols took over, as Governor Mutfwang only managed to acknowledge cheers and address the crowd from the alighting position of the plane before security manoeuvred him into what was going to start and birth the longest official motorcade to pull out of the Heipang Airport since the restoration of democratic rule in 1999!
Beginning at about 1:05pm when the Governor’s pilot vehicles blared their way towards the exit of the Airport, the gates stayed akimbo for upward of one hour thirty five minutes, as a near-infinite convoy was unfolding sluggishly from the Airport and fading reluctantly into the tricky and intriguing geographical cast of Jos, amidst a weather that was intricate and poetic with fluctuating temperatures.
Between Heipang and Jos Town, not more than twenty minutes of business drive, The convoy was in halting mode: intermittently, the convoy would stop to behold in and acknowledge the warmth, good will, and fervour of people who had positioned themselves at junctions, roundabouts, bus stops, and shopping centres along the Heipang-Jos Road to catch a glimpse – or, if need can, have a feel and celebrate with the peoples’ governor who just over came the unpopular and anti-people onslaught of the APC at the Supreme Court.
That was the pervasive mood in Jos and the larger Plateau State penultimate Saturday and for most of last week. Different individuals and groups sponsored celebrations that snowballed into all-night vigil, chanting choruses, chorusing prayers, and invoking the power of Him on the Throne to vacate all evil on the way of the governor, and to guide him to continue and conclude on the impressive note he has begun. Mutfwang put a sober spanner into the works of the subsisting celebrations when he mobilized contractors back to the sites of abandoned projects last Tuesday, in an urban renewal and upgrade programme.
The January 12 decision of the Supreme Court that affirmed the victory of Governor Caleb Mutfwang apparently stopped push from getting to shove in Plateau State. For Plateau people, it is a landmark judgment because it is in sync with the decision, feelings and emotions of the people. For many in Plateau and beyond, it was an unnecessary litigation sparked by the greed of the petitioner and speculative and dubious sense of representative democracy. For many more, it was even more unnecessary because of the manner it threatened the Plateau Project, and exacerbated emotions and primordial sentiments that are the bane of growth, security, and prosperity of the State. The litigation process also exacted integrity and fame from professionals, professors, old Editors, Ambassadors, technocrats, and other stakeholders who sought name-calling and other guile compromises to pervert truth and justice.
