Open letter to Governor Lalong

Open letter to Governor Lalong 

Dear your Excellency,

AREAS OF IMPORTANCE THAT NEED ATTENTION

I must commend you for your giant strides in improving the lot of Plateau State in many aspects such as; providence of security, prompt payments of salaries, war on Covid-19, completion of uncompleted projects by your predecessors, construction of legacy projects and so on.

Sir, there are suggestion I am putting forward to you out of serious concern which I perceive will add more value to your administration and will help in bettering the lives of most citizens of the state. 

I decide to go public because I believe it will get to you quicker than the bureaucratic conventional means which might take much longer time or be frustrated otherwise.

Sir my suggestions are on these wise:

PARTNERSHIP WITH PRIVATE SECTOR

There are small scale businesses which if your administration will partner with can expand them into large companies, boost the revenue drive of the state and employment opportunities for the teeming unemployed youths. For instance Pye Acha company ran by Engineer Pam Tok. Acha is an indispensable food for diabetes patients. If your administration let's say sinks N3000m to boost it; aside the ground rent, company tax and Pay as You Earn (PAYE) of the workers that will go to the government coffers, the government can make a lot of money from the sells of each packed of the processed acha. If the company is able to produce 100, 000, 000 packets in a month at the rate of N2,000 each, and the government gets N1 on each packet, it will be getting N100, 000, 000 monthly. 

The company will employ a lot of workers and so many people will go into farming acha because they know their produce has a good market. 

It is not only the Pye acha the government can partner with, there are so many up coming companies in the state that need the support of the government to grow and stabilize. This gesture will benefit the government, the state and the entrepreneurs and also attract investors.

REVAMPING DILAPIDATED GOVERNMENT COLLEGES BUILT BY GOMWALK

Sir, the defunct Government Teachers Colleges now Government Colleges, built by the administrator of Benue- Plateau, Police Commissioner Joseph Dechi Gomwalk in the seventies, located at Zaria Road in Jos North Local Government Area (LGA), Jingre in Bassa LGA, Amper in Kanke LGA and Dengi in Kanam LGA are perpetually deteriorating structurally wise. It will take billions of naira now to raise such structures with the hostels and staff quarters. 

The schools have the capacity of accommodating one thousand students each, but now have very few students due to the proliferation of private secondary schools, community day secondary schools and government day secondary schools in the same vicinities. 

Sir, other government schools around them can be submerged into them or they can be converted to satellite institutions of Plateau State University, Plateau Polytechnic, College of Education, College of Agric or College of Arts and Remedial Studies. They can be used for your proposed special science schools. Or they can be transformed into special vocational and technical schools or Grade II Teachers Colleges. 

Something urgent has to be done before they dilapidate to the level of collapsing which is a bad omen. 

News are making the rounds that the lands of the schools are being encroached by citizens. If nothing is done, it could result to face-off one day between the schools and their communities as being witnessed between University of Jos and Naraguta community.  

NATIONAL NEWSPAPER

Your Excellency, since the fall of the Nigeria Standard, Plateau State has ceased to have a national newspaper. So many newspapers publish by individuals in the state have wider reach and coverage more than the standard which appears to be nonexisting. 

Your administration relies so much on papers popularly called Northern, Eastern and Western Papers which are DailyTrust, The Nation, The Sun, Punch and so on. 

With the current state of the Nation, the voice of Plateau Should be heard as there are millions of Plateau indigenes scattered all round the country. So much dependence on the social media cannot meet the demand of information dissemination as the percentage of those operating offline is little above those online. There are lots of people who prefer hard copies for reference in due course than those satisfied with online news. 

Your excellency you can revamp the Nigeria Standard or encourage independent papers to grow. The South West encouraged the The Nation and it is what it is today. The core north encouraged Daily Trust and it is what it is today. The South East encouraged The Sun and it is what it is today. The South South encouraged Daily Independent and it is what it is today. Electronic media such as television and radio stations have the limitation of once an information is passed it is gone, except if it is repeated or saved online, unlike the newspaper that can still begotten from a newspaper vendor.  Nobody will encourage Plateau Papers to go national, but the people of Plateau State themselves. I am not giving this counsel because I am in the business, but we must look into the future, because time will come that we will be left to our fate for the world to understand us, our plight, and the promotion of our potentialities to attract investors. 

Truly your Excellency, your administration has never been an encouragement to papers published on the Plateau to grow, this can kill the morale of the publishers and truncate the projection of the state in good light against those daubing it with dirty mortar. There should be a deliberate policy to have a national paper on the Plateau. No country or state can survive without a strong national paper in this competitive world that societies struggle to cage and eclipse others to survive. 

POLITICAL APPOINTEES

Your Excellency, despite the paucity of funds in the state, the culture of employing political advisers, personal assistants and special assistants should not go down the drain, because it's a way of temporal job creation with multiplier effects of meeting not only the needs of the beneficiaries but their dependants and also consolidating the ruling party in the state.

Sir, this I feel in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic plight, the appointment of special advisers, personal assistants can help reduce the hardship of some of those that earnestly worked for your success at the polls since there is not enough to give everyone in the state. Also the unemployment rate is very high.  

POOR OVERHEADS FOR MINISTRIES

Your Excellency, as a journalist that interacts with so many citizens of the state, the outcry against your administration of not reaching out to the needy, and getting small contracts from the ministries is very loud. 

Ministries should be able to give small contracts and support the needy with little tokens because governance is all about the welfare of the people. Welfare of the people does not rest only on building hospitals, schools, recreation centres, security and others, but also caring for the needy and vulnerable. That is why in developed countries there are provisions for the unemployed and those who lost their jobs to be assisted by the government with little funds. We can see that from the funds shared to their citizens during lockdown by some developed countries.

Your Excellency, not everyone has access to you, but mostly to your commissioners and other political appointees whom their communities look up to for support being their representatives in your administration. If they cannot support them because very little is sent to their ministries, the bulk blame will go to you, and will badly affect the party in the state. 

There are those who did one two jobs to some ministries but due to lack of funds they could not be paid. I am one of them. The Ministry of Information in August 2018 gave my paper alongside other national papers a congratulatory message to Dr. Aisha Buhari for backing an Honorary Doctorate Degree in South Korea, and has not paid till date, the reason being there are no funds in the ministry. 

Your Excellency, it is my earnest wish that you use your exalted office to consider the suggestion I put forth to add value to your administration and smiles on more faces in the state as you are doing.

Thanks 

Yours sincerely 

Shabul Mazadu