Lalong’s also used the occasion of the APC National Convention to exhibit the impunity capable only of the head of a manor and effectively impugned on the tribal and ethnic pride and integrity of the Taroh people of Langtang

The year 2022 is proving to be a bad season for Governor Simon Bako Lalong. From leaked Government House memos and the Governor’s Office being in a state of disrepair, to an underfunded Plateau State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), internal political alliances, a group of conspirators, percolating clouds of labour crises and daily defections of APC renegades to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), 2023 is presenting the Plateau State Governor with a turbulent pre-season.

It is even more unfortunate that Lalong himself appears benumbed and overcome by a fit of political miscalculations and social amnesia.

After a grueling manhaunt that culminated in the exit of Letep Dabang as State Chairman of the APC, internal processes in the Plateau APC have been getting worse, especially after Governor Lalong handpicked members of the State Working Committee, got them inaugurated before they filled the necessary and enabling forms for the positions and bungled the congresses throughout the state. Lalong’s stranglehold on the APC was consolidated in the nomination of candidates for local government councils elections, when he single handedly determined the candidates for councilors and the 17 chairmanship positions, who emerged ‘victorious’ in a most controversial local government council election ever conducted in Plateau.

Lalong’s also used the occasion of the APC National Convention to exhibit the impunity capable only of the head of a manor and effectively impugned on the tribal and ethnic pride and integrity of the Taroh people of Langtang.

The national leadership of the APC had zoned the positions of deputy national secretary and National Youth Leader in the National Working Committee to Plateau State ahead of its national convention. Well received by the state chapter of the party, the position of Deputy National Secretary of the party was further zoned to the Taroh people of Langtang North.

In a sudden twist, however, and acting the humiliating ridicule in political circles known as Langtang ‘Northing’, which translates simply as a politically conquered lot, a delegation of Goemai, the tribe of Governor Lalong and the Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen, met with Governor Lalong in Abuja and told him why the position of deputy national secretary of the APC must be occupied by a Goemai - an ethnic group found in Shendam and Qua’an Pan local government areas of Plateau South.

Lalong complied and factored into the Langtang ‘Northing’ callous joke, and substituted the positions, leaving Langtang North with the less fancied position of National Youth Leader and went ahead to make his choice and imposed him on the Taroh people. In the circumstances, Lalong picked his estranged former Commissioner for Lands, a Goemai, Festus Fuanter, the same person he earlier discarded and rejected for a second term, and he was sworn in last week as the deputy national secretary of the APC as ‘consensus’ candidate.

While Langtang ‘Northing’ subsists as a doctrine of political weakening and oppression of the Taroh, especially in Plateau South which senatorial representation Lalong is coveting in his post 2023 calculations, the Goemai superiority and gallantry in the state’s political outlook is unmistakable: the governor, minister and APC’s national deputy secretary are all Goemai.

Last week, the same Goemai won another uncommon one as Governor Lalong’s nominee, Prof Hale Gabriel Longpet, was named as the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner representing Plateau State, to replace the former Resident Commissioner in charge of Benue State, Nentawe Yilwarda

Goshwe, who has been deceived into a utopian venture, as he runs in an uphill governorship race in Plateau State in 2023 against Lalong’s interest.

The decimation of the Taroh political army side by side with the Goemainizatoon of the political economy of Plateau South is a deliberate lethal departing policy of Lalong to ensure that, as a rival in number and size as an ethnic group, the Taroh threat in the zone is subjugated and put at bay for a long time - if not permanently.

Part of the design of the Langtang ‘Northing’ mantra is to apply the logic of ‘using a Nigger to catch a Nigger’, as it is happening in Langtang North local government council presently. While some of the Taroh elite, who are supposed to rise and talk against the impunity and injustice that Lalong is using his Taroh apostle in the APC to deprive the people of a government of their choice and mandate are looking the other way, saying the Lalong stooge masquerading as chairman of the council against constitutionality and court order is also their own, Lalong will be winning his war against the Taroh ahead of 2023.

The Taroh, who have realised the real and present danger of the Langtang’Northing’ script, have been very reactionary and assertive. The All Progressives Congress in Langtang North and Langtang South has depleted precipitately. The most recurrent social event in Taroh land in recent times hold in the opposition PDP strongholds as defectors are received from the APC with tales of political emasculation, Lalong’s tyranny and a desire for hope and direction. In two major events held separately in Langtang North and Langtang South, at least 24, 000 people left for the PDP, including two former local government chairmen.

While Lalong battles the Taroh and orchestrate strategies to deepen the Langtang’Northing’ as an instrument of political and economic subjugation, he has been unable to resolve the power struggle between the starving and under-funded state secretariat of the APC and the office of the Secretary to the Government of the State. As at press time, sources within APC confirmed that the state APC chairman, Rufus Bature, and the Secretary to the Government of the State, Professor Danladi Abok Atu, are not on speaking terms, no thanks to a bitter power feud.

Bature, himself a former SGS to Lalong before he was misguided into a senatorial race, which he lost expectedly, is not happy that the SGS, Atu, is interfering in the administration of the party’s secretariat, including holding onto unspent funds for last February 26 by-election, in which the party performed woefully.

Incumbency advantage does not really look promising to boost the party’s chances in the next general elections; and the Governor lacks the political charisma and brinkmanship to rejig its fortunes before the crucial time. Many view the abysmal showing of the APC in the recent Jos North/Bassa Federal Constituency by-election as a forebear and foretaste of a cataclysmic disaster that awaits the APC in Plateau in 2023. Factions and intense infighting with disillusionment are dominating the body chemistry of the party presently, forcing at least two former Speakers of the State House of Assembly to abandon the party for the opposition. Reports also say Lalong is ambushed by possible betrayals and sabotage by some of his appointees who are still holding on in government and pretending to be with him. The party is feared to be threatened more by fake membership and potential of antiparty activities during elections to protest and revenge the Governor’s high-handedness and impunity.

With a seething political war against his deputy, Prof Sonni Gwanle Tyoden who is in the crowded governorhip race on the APC platform, Langtang ‘Northing’ may yet become a suicidal medicine for the owner for at least two reasons: history could be afoot again because since 2007, no incumbent has been able to determine and install his successor. As it was for Joshua Dariye, so was it for Jonah Jang and it is looking palpable for Lalong with robust enemies within and without. Secondly, as it is, even his senatorial ambition needs prayers.

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