From Gyang Bere, Jos
The gubernatorial Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang said fighting unemployment, poverty and insecurity is a task that must be given adequate attention by empowering youths and women if trusted with the mandate to govern the state. He said creating a conducive business atmosphere that will better the living condition of people, through affordable and improved healthcare system and education will be prioritized.
Unemployment is taking a toll on youths in Plateau and the situation is getting worse everyday, how will you drive Plateau people particularly the youths out of poverty?
The issue of job creation, reducing unemployment is a task that we must deliberately and collectively work towards addressing the situation in our state. First, we have to reckon with the fact that as of today, Plateau State is officially indebted to the tune of N200 billion; we have not been able to pay salaries of civil servants for some months now, that shows that by 2023, we will be in a deep hole; that makes the necessity of creating wealth and creating jobs very imperative. We have to break it into three stages, the short term, the medium term and the long term. The statistics of unemployment vary from one agency to another, so we cannot give you accurate statistic of unemployment but we live with our relations and we know that the situation is pretty bad. In the short term, what we can do is to help our youth to improve their employability; those who have gone to school, we can add skills to them so that they can find jobs even outside the state so that they can contribute to the GDP. We will also explore opportunities within the ICT sector where our youths are going to find opportunities. We are also going to look at the entertainment industry for the benefit of our youthfull population. A critical demographic we must not forget is the women group; we must not forget the women group, we must look at how we can enhance their capacity in the informal sector so that the little thing they are doing to generate income for their families are done in a better way. In the medium and long term, we can then look at the complete economic revolution in terms of the industries that have failed and resuscitating them when we have to be able to restructure some of our debts; we will be able to create new avenues of wealth, then we can make investment that can actually create the jobs that we need. The power sector is a sector that is waiting to be opened up but that will happen only in the long term. I therefore would not want to play politics with this because people’s lives depend on it. Creating jobs is not going to be a tea party but is a job we must do and we will be looking at public private partnerships to extend this possibility.
What are your plans towards addressing the ravaging insecurity that has perished several lives in Plateau State?
Security requires practical experience because the security architecture in the country at the moment is not so much in the hands of the state because of the constitution, while we will be advocating for a constitutional reform that allows Governors to become Chief security Officers in their states; we will also be trying to deal with the situation locally. We had a head start in Plateau State with Operation Rainbow which unfortunately has been allowed to fizzle out, when we come into government, we are going to resurrect Operation Rainbow, Plateau State owned security outfit. We are going to enhance its capacity for information gathering to be able to deliver on those early warning systems. Then, we are going to empower our communities to make sure they defend themselves to make sure that they relate well with other neighbouring communities so that they will form a vanguard against many intrusion and then we are going to be very strong on the rule of law; criminality must be dealt with. We cannot afford people who come to perpetrate crimes in whatever guise under whatever name. We will ensure that they are arrested and prosecuted. I am sure when we empower the communities, empower the vigilante groups, a lot of security issues will be dealt with at that level. We are also going to be looking after the welfare of those in charge of security; we will make sure that we address it squarely to secure our people and our state.
What Plateau people seem to have missed in the last 7 years is good governance; how will you ensure there is good governance in the state?
I think the first guarantee for success in governance is the leader and what I intend to bring to Plateau people is leadership. Leadership that has pedigree; leadership that can summon political will to change our narrative is very critical. Secondly, as key to that, I will look for people who have better ideas than I do; I will not feel inferior having people who can think better than me, I will love to bring them on board. Thirdly, we will build processes, we will build institutions. It is not going to be haphazard, we are going to make sure that processes are followed transparently and we have to talk about ease for doing business. We will make sure that all the things that we said are given but we must make sure we build transparent processes that even international organizations can leverage on to be able to partner with us.
Lastly, we must build the requisite network, we can’t do it alone; we are in a global village, we therefore should be able to bring on board people who can trust us; they can do business with us and I think that when we have all this on ground, we will be able to attract the necessary investments and our state can be better.
How will you revamp the agricultural sector that is gradually going moribund for the benefit of the people?
I grew up farming, so agriculture is a passion. Like I said, you have to break them into short, medium and long term. When we come into government by the grace of God May 29, 2023, the farming season would have been in earnest, so there is nothing too much we can do. But what we can do in the immediate is to improve in the farming practice that we find on ground so that we can improve harvest. As we go along in that season, we will make arrangement to harvest rain water so that we will be able to deploy that for dry season farming thereby expanding value change of agriculture. We must move from rain fed agriculture to covering the entire spectrum of the year in farming as we get along. We are going to bring in improved seedlings, we are going to bring in improved farming practice and gradually as we move on, we will go mechanized, deploy technology within the first two years of our existence as a government so that we will be able to improve on the capacity of our farmers and I am sure as we do that, a lot of our young people will be attracted into agriculture and some issues of unemployment we are dealing with will be gradually addressed. So, agriculture is about improvement in every face of it, improvement with what you find on ground, access to credit facilities, improvement in farming inputs; this is what we are going to be working on as a government as eventually, we are going to leverage on world best practices to ensure that technology is deployed to agriculture.
The education sector in Plateau has suffered lack of improvement over the years, do you have new innovations to improving the sector?
The situation in the education sector has turned into a cross of enormous proportion; as a local government Chairman, I had the privilege to audit the public schools that we had and I found that we have a man power deficit, so the numbers are not adequate. Those who are qualified as teachers are not adequately trained, then we have infrastructure deficit so it’s a vicious circle. We will be leveraging on the assets at the State Primary Education Board to be able to bring the changes required from the basic education level right through to the secondary level and then we will also be able to address the issues of the tertiary level using the institution that are already in place like TETFUND but let me say this, that the long term secret to improving the quality education has to be tied to wealth creation. If we do not create wealth, we cannot improve education to the level that we need to improve because it requires massive investments in terms of finance to be able to train manpower and to build adequate infrastructure to address the gaps that we have in the education sector. Again, we will look at this in phases, in the short term, in the medium term and long term, and the immediate thing we can do in the short term is to improve the supervisory mechanism of what we find on ground to ensure that at least, we get value for money and as we scale it up, we get value ultimately.
What new thing will you bring on board to improve education?
I will not lie to you that the situation we have found ourselves is a bad one; anybody who tells you will do magic to solve these problems overnight is deceiving you. But I am worried over the situation and if we don’t resolve these issues, it will consume the whole state; therefore, we must find a solution to all these. In the last 7 years, the situation is getting worse because we did not place priority on education; we are spending money on less important things and leaving education. The first thing we will do is to return priority to education; we must know that without education, our youths will be lawless and therefore it is becoming compelling for us to solve this problem in the education sector. The first thing we will do is to look for how we will look for money because without money, we cannot pay salary, without money we cannot build infrastructure, so we must find ways of getting money. If this is done, then we will be able to pump back into the educational sector. This means that areas where money are diverted and areas where money are spent unnecessarily will be suspended so that we can take money we need back to the education sector. As we move on, we will find how to rebuild the Plateau economy so that we can get resources to pay salaries. Therefore, we must show concern that education is our priority and someone like me who is a beneficiary of education, I will love to see the younger people growing educationally. If I have my way, everybody will go to school.
The health sector in Nigeria is an eyesore, what will you do to change the situation in Plateau?
I agree with you because I think a lot of discussion is centered on secondary health care which deals mostly with the elite and a lot of our people live in the rural areas and we must get the primary healthcare system working. As Chairman in Mangu, I had 84 primary health care centres in Mangu and we were able to recruit some NYSC doctors and they brought to bear a lot of skills on that system and it served as eye opener that we actually improved health care system at that level. We equally improved on the quality of manpower because health care first of all is about prevention and not about cure and to be able to get the preventive side right, we need a lot of education, a lot of information at that level and these are things we can do in the immediate to liase with the local government to make sure that we improve on the quality of health care at that level. And ultimately as improved funding comes, of course we intend to at least have a referral hospital on the Plateau that is world class and then we will be able to make Plateau State a health tourism destination. Apart from that, the issue of funding is critical, we will then see what is on ground and look at the issue of insurance in the healthcare and the contributory scheme to ensure that more people come on board so that the cost of heath care can be spread. I believe that when we deal with infrastructure over a period of time, we would be able to get the health care system working better by the grace of God.