Plateau State has been in the news for the wrong reasons in recent times due to the resurgence of insecurity in the state. The crisis, which has been tagged farmers-herders conflict, has resulted in the displacement of local farming communities and mass killings. But the Governor of the state, Caleb Mutfwang, in an interview with select journalists, disagrees with the farmers-herders narrative, insisting that it is an organised crime to impoverish the people of the state.

What was your focus when you took office two years ago?
When we took over on May 29, 2023, we were clear-minded that our main focus was to lift our people out of poverty. We came with the understanding that the main constraint that has held back our people is poverty and that puts even the insecurity in context. That is part of the battle to keep our people in perpetual poverty; because all that has happened with the challenge of insecurity over the years is to impoverish the people. And once the people do not have the economic stamina, they easily cave in. And they become victims.

But we are encouraging dialogue. We had an interface with some of the Fulani leaders, I believe, about a month ago. And we are beginning to educate them.The earlier you come on board, the better because you cannot sustain this economy. It is not beneficial to you. If it was beneficial, you would agree with me that a lot of the instances of kidnapping, which has become more lucrative now than cattle rearing, would not even happen. So, definitely, what has been going on in the plateau is more of an economic war. It has to do with land grabbing. It has to do with economic impoverishment because we have farmlands. Last week, we sent a team of security personnel and tractors to go and cultivate land that the IDPs had abandoned because they had been chased out of their community. The security personnel were fired at, seriously. They opened shots at them. And they had to retreat and then reinforce. So, we have that kind of story scattered all over the state. It’s not about farmers-herders class, and I will keep challenging that narrative.

Plateau State is one of the most blessed lands in the country. Our advantage in agriculture is God-given. Ninety per cent of what we used to call Irish potatoes is produced here. We have renamed it Plateau potatoes, because I think we deserve the exclusive rights in the propagation and production of potatoes. We are making plans to really revolutionise the farming and production and processing of those potatoes in the next three to five years. And we’ve begun to lay the foundation, which is getting the right seeds. We haven’t had it until we came on board.

How do you intend to revolutionise farming in the state?
We are planning. We are strategising. We are in talks presently with a company called Agrico, which is a Dutch-based company that is the largest multiplier of seeds in the world. They visited us here. And it will interest you to also know that we earned the right to host the African Potato Conference, which just held in Uganda. The next one will be held in 2028 here in Jos, Plateau State. So, it’s one of the crops we are focusing on. It will shock you that hotels like Transcorp and all the five-star hotels don’t eat our potatoes. They import from South Africa.You won’t blame them; it is because of the quality of what we produce.

You know, for purposes of international standards, you have the concept of traceability from farm preparation to harvest to storage, and what have you, before you can even think of export. But it will interest you to know that Mangu, which today is one of the areas that is being challenged security-wise, is one of the largest producers of potato. It is perhaps the biggest food market in Plateau State, and people come from West Africa and Northern Africa to Mangu market. So, I’m trying to put this in context. You know that the challenges of insecurity that we’re battling with, to a large extent, are economic.

But the narrative is that it is a conflict between farmers and herders?
It is not! I have challenged the traditional narrative of farmers-herders clash. Since coming on board, I found that it’s nothing but trash. It’s a facade to continue with criminality, organised criminality. That is actually what is happening. It is a deliberate attempt to make sure that people do not cultivate their farms. And if they don’t cultivate their farms, which are their main economic activity, invariably you’ll push them into poverty. And it is not a coincidence that insecurity gets heightened at the onset of the farming season.

But we have been battling it on a daily basis. And I can tell you; this is a very organised crime where people try to claim that maybe cattle was rustled and all of that stuff, and they have to kill the whole community. But even in law, you know that provocation has to be commensurate with retaliation. You don’t go and deliberately wipe out a whole settlement, a whole village, a whole community, because three cattle were rustled; it doesn’t make sense. But like I said earlier, our main focus is on building a Plateau economy that is resilient and we believe that we can be able to build an economy here that runs into billions of dollars, if it is well organised. And agriculture becomes one of our main economic drivers.

Are you doing anything in the area of livestock?
For the other aspect of agriculture, which is livestock, this is the best place to raise livestock in the whole country. There’s no question about it, because of the advantages of weather. I can tell you with all confidence that the eggs produced on the Plateau have the longest lifespan in the whole country, that is shelf life, because of the weather. And so, one of the things we are trying to leverage is to provide a lead in the propagation of livestock, which again is a strategy to deal with the issue of farmers-herders clash. This is because the economics of open grazing is unprofitable. The cows that are being moved around openly can give you a maximum of two litres of milk in a day. But the modern trend is to be able to deal with other species of cattle that give you a far better yield. And I want to say this – under the last PDP administration, which was led by Governor Jonah Jang, 250 Friesian cattle were imported from South Africa.
Each of those cattle gives you nothing less than 20 litres a day. So, you can imagine all that we’ve been fighting and losing lives over, for two litres, when we have actually an opportunity to be able to get 20 litres. And we are saying that our strategy is to be able to give these cattle to families to rear. If a family is able to have two cows, for example, and can be able to get 20 litres of milk from each of those cows a day, multiply it by seven days and one month, you can imagine the economic prosperity that will come to that family.

It will interest you to note also that Nigeria has a supply deficit of milk in millions of litres. I can’t give you the figures now. But we have not been able to beat local demand and so a lot of milk condensates are still being imported to package milk in this country. And I’m glad to let you know that some of the giants are already talking to us. Friesland, of course, you have the Integrated Dairies Limited (IDL), which produces one of the best yogurts in the country, known as Farmfresh.

What do you think about the issue of ranching?
Our people were a bit reluctant to welcome the idea of cattle ranching because of the history of Ruga and all that was associated with it. But we are educating them. Their opposition stems from the fact that Ruga is built around the Fulani cow, but this has nothing to do with the Fulani cow. We’re looking at improved varieties of species of cattle that you can’t move around because in terms of flesh and in terms of milk, they give you far better yield than what we have been battling over.

So, by the time we improve the consumption of this new breed of beef and milk, you can imagine what it will mean to the herders because it will mean that there is no more market, really, for them. Because again, we are building a 500-capacity abattoir, which means we’ll be slaughtering 500 cattle a day in the abattoir. And it’s geared for export. So, you have to have an economy built around livestock – the cattle, transportation, the slaughter houses and so on. We believe the next step is for the Federal Government to create the Ministry of Livestock, to purposely focus on this. We see a future in it. So, for us, the focus is to stay the course on economic empowerment.

On this issue of insecurity, why are you not talking about state police?
I do appreciate the challenge that some of our security chiefs are facing in Abuja because they do not get first-hand information. And that’s why I’m an unrepentant advocate of state police. Security chiefs here are constrained in many respects. And that’s why it is always better to deal with security locally. So, we must have security federalism, if you want to call it, so that we can democratise access to security. Somebody cannot sit in Abuja and know what is happening in a remote village, in one of my local governments. We sat down to analyse the security challenge and we found that Plateau State was even one of the safest in North-central Nigeria. This is because what is happening in many of the North-central states now is alarming. Why did I say we are better off? Because in terms of occupation by the bandits, there is no local government here that is entirely occupied by bandits. In fact, the worst case we had was in the local government called Wase, where you have a grazing reserve.

There is a vast forest land around Wase and Kanam that shares borders with Taraba, Gombe State, and Bauchi states. And this has become a den for them. But a lot of that has been reduced in the last two, three months. That’s why we are planning to restart grazing within the Wase grazing reserve. We are collaborating with the security agencies, because if we don’t reclaim the land, we will not be able to improve our fortunes. And we’re reviewing the security situation. For the security challenge, the first matter to deal with is to have an honest conversation, because once you have a mischaracterisation of the reasons behind the conflicts, you are not going to apply the right solutions. And that’s why it has not only been sustained; it has almost engulfed the entire country, as we are talking today.

And it is not the creation of Mr. President; because again, sometimes people try to bring politics into this thing to set me up against the president. I’m not a critic of Mr. President, as most of you know. I am the chief security officer in my state, but I’m equally as useless as the information I get. I can’t go to the field. So, I have to rely on the federal security chiefs.

But beyond the conventional security agencies, we’ve tried to develop other channels of communication that give us real time information on what is actually happening on ground.

There’s a lot happening with the security agencies. In many respects, some of them have overstayed on the field. So, they are demoralised. Some of them are depressed, some have seen too many horrible things and they are human beings. So, we try to find a way to encourage and boost their morale, and make sure that they see themselves as defenders of the people.

But sometimes it would look like the ogas (managers) at the top look at this thing like it’s a peacekeeping force. Thank God we identified Boko Haram as enemies of state. And if you don’t characterise some of these other elements as enemies of state, the ferocity with which you pursue them is going to be reduced. So, we would continue to manage the situation to the best of our ability. And I thank God that despite all the challenges we are facing, we are pressing on to make life better for our people. Having said that, like I said, agriculture is one of our economic drivers.

What are you doing in the area of mining?
The other economic driver for us, of course, is mining. Mining began in Nigeria here on the Plateau in 1903. The colonial masters exploited this fully. And it was one of the major contributors to GDP in the first republic. It was tin and columbite, but we’ve gone beyond that. It will interest you to know that with all the mining activity that has taken place, what we have done is to scratch the surface. We have never really gone into industrial mining. So, a lot of illegalities have developed around that sector over the years, which has led to the death of many people.

A few days ago, one of the mining sites collapsed, because the safety standards are yet to be fully enforced.

And that’s why some months ago, we suspended mining activities so that we can be able to put some order into the sector. We are losing a lot of people in those illegal mining pits, unfortunately. And alongside that is that many of the activities that are carried out in that sector are shrouded in secrecy.

So, if they were properly declared, we would be able to earn more revenue in terms of derivation. That’s why we want to be able to put a modicum of order into that sector. So far, the records from real minerals extracted from Nigeria and exported are scattered here and there. They are yet to really put them into the national database so that we can know exactly how much is derived. A lot of individuals are profiting and profiteering from the mineral resources. A lot of foreigners have come into the state, who are doing a lot of illegal activities. But it’s a sector we believe that can add to our revenue base in the years to come. We are also participating as a state because we’ve also registered our own Plateau Mineral Development Company. So, we want to also play in the sector and see how we can bring benefits to our people.

Since you talk of good weather and food abundance, you should be doing something in the tourism sector?
The third economic driver for us is tourism. We’ve often talked about Plateau State as a home of peace and tourism. And we’ve only been talking about potential, but we are making sure that we go beyond potential. We are looking at all the facets of tourism – medical tourism, sports tourism, cultural tourism, sites of interest, which we have in abundance. We are trying to develop that sector. We are collaborating with international organisations to come up, first of all, with a tourism master plan, which should form the basis for what we want to do in the years to come. One of the things that we’ve noticed here is that there has been an upsurge in people coming into the state. One evidence is that our hotel rooms are usually fully booked during the weekends. It is one of the highest in this part of the country.

Sometimes you come into Jos; you won’t find a hotel to sleep in, especially on the weekends. Jos is the transit route to the Northeast. A lot of people going to the Northeast break their journey here on the plateau; they either go home and come and stop over at Jos or they stop over at Jos before they continue. There are a lot of activities that are going on. That’s why we’re renovating our two flagship hotels. We had the Hill Station Hotel, which is one of the legacy hotels in this country. It used to be owned by Nigeria Hotels, but it’s now property of Plateau State substantially because we have about 75 per cent of the shares.

Then we’re also rebuilding the Plateau Hotels, which is exclusively owned by the Plateau State government. The good thing is that these are Public-Private Partnerships (PPP). We are not putting money from the treasury into those assets. We are reviving a lot of moribund assets too. We are reviving the Jos International Breweries.

What are you doing to improve the civil service?
The civil service is in a sorry state. Today, we have a manpower gap because of lack of recruitment over the last decade or more. And some ministries, you have people on levels 15, 16, and the next grade are on level nine and 10.  You can imagine such a gap. So, we are rebuilding the entire civil service. We see ourselves as laying new foundations for future generations to build upon, not just in civil service, but also in education, healthcare, transportation and others.

When we came into government, our schools were at the brink of being deregistered. Many courses were no longer accredited, because payments could not be made to make sure those departments were functioning. A case in point is the state polytechnic, where at its height of glory, had an admission number of 13,000, but it plunged to 3,000. Today, we have rebuilt it to over 6,000. Confidence is returning! One of the things I keep telling people when they ask me, so what have you brought to government? And I say the thing we have brought to government is hope. We are renewing the hope of the citizenry in government; people can believe that government is there for them. And I think that is very crucial.

In the transport sector, we are being pragmatic. We just launched mass transit metro buses. Conditional cash transfers in this country have been laden with a lot of fraud. But here we found a practical solution to it where a cost of transportation that would normally cost a commuter about N2,000, we’re giving him at N400. You can imagine the savings on it. We’ve computed that on an average, in a month, somebody who patronises those metro buses has a savings of probably N40,000 to N50,000 as an individual. And we move about 9,000 passengers on a daily basis. With the additional buses we’ve gotten now, I’m sure it’s going to be more because people have developed confidence; they’ve abandoned their vehicles and are taking these buses.

The routes are predictable, the timings are predictable, and the buses are convenient. And that’s why we have also invested in road construction because you cannot allow these buses to ply potholes. You have to get decent roads for them to ply. We are revisiting the entire infrastructure in the state, particularly within what we call the Greater Jos Master Plan. And we are reviewing it at the moment. It’s been in existence for about 10 years. It’s due for a review.