National Issues
Mangu’s Metamorphosis -By Kene Obiezu
Coming exactly a month after more than 200 people were killed in neighbouring local governments, the pattern is clear. Ruthless killers are stationed in the Plateau waiting for the word from those who sponsor them.
Caleb Mutfwang is a former Chairman of Mangu Local Government Area.
He won the March 18, 2023 election to become Governor. He won at the Supreme Court on January 12 to remain Governor.
Mangu has never been the same since Mutfwang became Governor. Until he was declared winner, his local government area was largely spared Plateau’s penchant for bloody chaos.
Since Mutfwang won, the killers who hover over the Plateau have deployed their killing machines to his local government area.
Mangu’s crime is that the state governor calls it home. Dozens of people have been killed. Many livelihoods utterly destroyed.
Politics in Plateau State is a unique proposition. Chaotic and unpredictable, the state holds its own politically. The average Plateau voter is a rebel who refuses to show the docility of voters from other North central states.
Blood is a factor. So much of it has been shed in the state. Since 1994, ethnic and religious crises fueled by politics have soaked the state with innocent blood.
Adversity has fueled a razor-sharp awareness in the state. Even the most apathetic resident knows that politics is a matter of life and death in the state.
In 2015, the ruling PDP in the state, which had been below par, was swept off its perch by the APC. The defeat stung by the rebuke it so strongly delivered.
The cauldron that Plateau is reached boiling point in February and March 2023. While Peter Obi of the Labour Party coasted to victory in the presidential election in the state, the PDP swept the other seats.
The APC whichh had known only plenty since 2015 was suddenly left scratching for scraps. Depressing dubiety at the Court of Appeal brought it some seats in the legislature. That is all it has now.
Mangu’s misstep is producing Mutfwang. Since Plateau voters chose him, his people have been forced to pay a terrible price.
Fighting resumed in the area on January 23, prompting Mutfwang to plunge the LGA into a 24-hour curfew.
Coming exactly a month after more than 200 people were killed in neighbouring local governments, the pattern is clear. Ruthless killers are stationed in the Plateau waiting for the word from those who sponsor them.
They butcher babies, then go on to occupy the lands emptied by their slaughter.
Plateau has been an amphitheatre of such atrocities for decades, as has Kaduna, Benue. Nigeria’s Northeast.
Kashim Shettima’s visit to Barkin-Ladi was to commiserate and assess the situation. To show the government’s straight face and firm fist.
But rather than doubt, Shettima’s government inspires doubt. Tired of describing the maelstrom in Mangu as a farmer-herder conflict, the government now calls it terrorism.
It refuses to associate politics with it because it plays politics. But it is in vain.
Because in Plateau, the killings are political. Mutfwang’s political success has brought instability to his people.
It is wickedly calculated to make the Governor look bad.
What hope is there in a governor who cannot even secure his local government?
Nigeria’s convoluted federalism insists that the Federal Government will control the instruments of force.
In the face of deadly insecurity, state governors often cannot do much. In 2022, the governors of Katsina and Zamfara asked their people to defend themselves.
Mutfwang is unable to do much for his people beyond declaring curfews and making desperate pleas to the federal government, which has the resources to act.
Those resources must now be put to use. Those playing politics with innocent lives in plateau State should be named.
It is too much coincidence that insecurity exploded in Mangu as soon as Mutfwang won his election.
If by now, Nigeria’s intelligence services do not know those sponsoring terrorism in Plateau State, they must be disbanded.
If they know, Nigerians deserve an explanation as to why they have not been brought to book.
A lack of transparency in public affairs produces public mistrust.
If those in government do not know those sponsoring violence in Plateau State, they have not business being there. If they know and refuse to do anything, it is betrayal.
The killers prowling the Plateau may be foreigners imported into the country and state to wreak havoc, who are their collaborators within?
Who are those Nigerians giving away their brothers and sisters?
Mangu deserves justice more than peace. The whole of Plateau State deserves justice.
There can be no justice unless the killers and their sponsors are exposed and successfully prosecuted.
Justice cannot be served until the machinery of death in Mangu is dismantled. It remains to be seen whether this government can do it.
Mangu does not deserve to mourn because Mutfwang won an election. Those who play politics with the lives of infants should know this.
Kene Obiezu,
