Since the return to democracy in 1999, Plateau State has remained a theatre of some sort, where a number of bizarre and extreme political measures have experimented; churning outcome in an unusual proportion which has continued to threaten and shaking it right to its rocky crust.
The unrest ranges from the declaration of emergency rule in 2004 on the State by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration to the lingering ethnoreligious crisis that has further marked the State out for several years.
As the presidential election beckons, the dynamics in the state are not short of a case study for any political analysis.
In the first sixteen years of democratic rule, the PDP had governed the State, from the days of Senator Joshua Dariye, to that of now Senator representing Plateau North, Jonah Jang. The PDP held sway in Plateau politics and efforts by other parties to challenge them had always failed.
For the sixteen years of PDP in the State, the opposition presidential candidate has never won an election in the State, even when the then opposition and now ruling APC won the governorship poll in the state in 2015, the incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari, still lost the elections with a margin of over a hundred thousand votes (Buhari got over 420, 000 votes, while Jonathan got over 520, 000 votes) to the then incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan. But that was the closest he has come since he started contesting in 2003, and one of the major factors that made him to get those votes then was the protest against the then incumbent Governor.
However, in 2019, the scenario looks different, as the APC is now at the helm of affairs in the state and the presidency, hence the incumbency factor may count for Buhari in the state.
The incumbent Governor, Simon Lalong, has campaigned for Buhari, hinging that his presidency has impacted positively on the state, especially in providing funds for the payment of inherited backlog of salaries of civil servants, completion of uncompleted projects by his predecessor, intervention in the agricultural sector and creation of jobs through the social intervention scheme of the federal government to thousands of youths in the state.
However, most people in the state, especially natives feel that the president has not stood by them in their moment of grief, because several communities in Bassa, Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, Jos South, Riyom, Mangu LGA among others, have suffered monumental loses both in human and property; where thousands have been displaced from their ancestral homes, especially the June, 23 and 24, 2018, attacks which claimed over 200 lives.
In 2015, most PDP chieftains and supporters in the state worked against their party, because they were angry with Goodluck Jonathan, who couldn’t stop the then incumbent Governor of the State, Jonah Jang, from presenting a candidate from his own constituency despite outcry by various stakeholders that it was the turn of Plateau South.
With the aforementioned, among other issues, the main opposition candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar may win the state, but it might not be a landslide victory.
Credit: DailyPost
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