Plateau outgoing govt officials plotting to truncate my victory —Mutfwang
Plateau State Governor-elect, Caleb Mutfwang, has said that some top officials of the Plateau State Government were plotting to truncate his victory.
Mutfwang made this known at an interactive session with Plateau citizens, hosted on Twitter Space.
He said some top officials of the Plateau State Government met in Abuja, plotting to truncate his victory.
“This evening, I have just been briefed of a meeting of some top officials of government in Plateau state in Abuja who were said to have met on how to truncate this victory.
“However I can tell you that they are only trying to catch straw because God has already gone ahead of them, so let no body be scared what God has done, no man can put asunder”, Mutfwang said while responding to questions during the interaction.
He said his administration was not considering the sacking of any worker in the civil service, but would improve the efficiency of workers through training and re-training.
“On the issue of civil service, we are not thinking about sacking people. What we are thinking of doing rather is to be able to improve the efficiency of those in the service by providing training and re-training.
“We will need to ensure that our civil service can compare to anywhere whether in Nigeria or even internationally. We need to bring in some more competent hands as we get along so that we can beef up the service”, he said.
The governor-elect also assured that he would not toy with the payment of salaries of workers, stressing that he belongs to the school of thought that believes that a labourer should be paid his wages.
“The issue of salary is not something that I play politics with. I come from the school of thought that the labourer is always worthy of his wages and that is why I have always said that the payment of salaries is a duty, not an achievement.
“So we are going to ensure that we stabilise the salary situation,” Mutfwang stressed.
He further said that modalities were being worked out to provide employment opportunities for the youths.
“We are finalising how to empower the youths, how to ensure that the youths are properly taken on board in terms of our policy direction.
“We are looking at avenues within the ICT world, avenues within the sports sector, the entertainment industry and the agricultural sector, particularly technology driven agriculture”, he said.
The governor-elect also dismissed insinuations that, he alongside other PDP candidates in the just concluded election had legal issues over nominations, stressing that such impressions were created by political opponents to undermine the PDP.
“I don’t want to dignify this with any comment other than all that you have read on the social media, take it from me.
“I am a lawyer by training, I am over 30 years at the bar, I know my onions and at the moment, there is no legal action anywhere in any court that is threatening my emergence as the governorship candidate (of the PDP) and eventually as the governor-elect.
“It was created by some of our political opponents in order to de-market us and they failed woefully because people have come to believe us.
“Let me reassure the people of Plateau state that God who has brought us this far, has already defended this victory. He will continue to defend this victory and that ultimately this mandate will serve the interest of Plateau state. I am aware that there are alot of Shenanigans going on”,he said.
Mutfwang stated further that he would not illegally sack the 17 Local Government chairmen in the state as was done by the outgoing governor, Simon Lalong, in 2015.
On assumption of office in 2015, Lalong sacked all the chairmen of the 17 LGAs in the state, including Mutfwang, even when their tenure had not expired.
The current council chairmen were all elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state.
Mutfwang who described the sacking as lawless, said he would not repeat such a primitive act.
He said: “I will not do anything unlawful concerning Local Government administration.
“The primitive manner in which I was removed from office in 2015 (by the outgoing administration of Lalong), we do not intend to repeat it.
“We will work within the ambit of the law and make sure we work with what we find on ground”.
He maintained that, “Being in opposition does not mean that we cannot work together, the bulk of the technocrats in the Local Government system are civil servants, they are government employees like anybody else and we will always find a way of working together.
“If the law gives us any lee way, if the law tells us to remove them, we remove them, if the law does not give us that leeway, we certainly find a way to work together with them.”
He said modalities were being worked out to provide employment opportunities for the youths.
“We are finalising how to empower the youths, how to ensure that the youths are properly taken on board in terms of our policy direction.
“We are looking at avenues within the ICT world, avenues within the sports sector, the entertainment industry and the agricultural sector, particularly technology driven agriculture”, Mutfwang said.
