Governor Caleb Mutfwang: Positioning The Plateau as the Jewel of the Crown in North Central Region

Undoubtedly, Governor Caleb Mutfwang’s decision to defect from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) has reshaped political conversations on the Plateau and beyond, raising key questions about security, development and the road to 2027. In this candid interview, he explained the reasons for his shift, how Plateau State has sustained relative peace amid national security challenges, the role of intelligence and community engagement, and the impact of federal support under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He also discussed the development prospects of aligning with the APC, party harmonisation, grassroots engagement, re-election considerations and the strategic importance of positioning The Plateau as the Jewel of the Crown in North Central Region and in Nigeria’s evolving political landscape. Chiemelie Ezeobi brings excerpts

It appears that there is a relative peace in the Plateau. How were you able to achieve that? What was the factor behind it that despite all what we hear outside of this place, relative peace is still being enjoyed on the Plateau?

Like you rightly observed, in fact last December was noted as one of the most peaceful in the recent history of the Plateau. Into the new year, if you came here on the 31st of December it was amazing. That was a reflection of the relative peace we are talking about. But the peace didn’t just take place in Jos, virtually all the state, the local governments, we had relative peace. Now it’s the result of concerted efforts. It’s not happenstance.

Especially, we have been lucky to stumble upon credible, actionable intelligence that helps us to nip some of the potential threats in the bud. You know, you don’t get intelligence without cultivating friendships and relationships. Where you cultivate the right relationships, people volunteer information, you know, and this is what we’ve been doing over the last two years. Then we began to see the dividend. Of course, I must be honest with you that in the last three months particularly, people may not have noticed this, but the body language of the President has changed. It has given more clarity to the security agencies to deal with the situation. They now feel empowered by the political leadership to say that we have your back, do the needful, and I think that has changed a lot.

Previously, in an earlier interview, you said you would never join APC. What happened afterwards that changed that trajectory? 

That interview was in June. To be honest with you, in July, to be precise, the President reached out to me and asked me to consider coming over to APC. And I politely declined, because my assessment then of the political dynamics of the Plateau is that the Plateau could only be compared to Anambra, where the commitment to a party is so passionate. And for whatever reason, the perception about the APC on the Plateau was largely negative.

There was no need for me to contemplate leaving the PDP at that point in time. But you also recall that from September thereabout, PDP began to wobble seriously. It got to the point where, as an insider, I became aware, like one of our elders said, that PDP had fallen to the hands of undertakers.

So at that point the question was, am I still going on with 2027 or not? I likened it to having a very serious appointment like a wedding ahead of you. The vehicle you are travelling in broke down very irreparably. So you are forced at that point in time either to look for a mechanic or to look for another vehicle. So going into 2027, I needed a platform. And when I looked at it, that PDP was not likely going to become a viable platform for 2027, I had to think of an option. Now the options were only to look for a new political party or now accept the invitation by the president.

When I did my own intelligence gathering about the state of parties in Nigeria, I found that it was least dangerous for me to align with, to respond to the president, than to be thinking of a new platform. I have never believed in the gladiators in ADC, for example, and I didn’t think that was an option for me. 

So to answer your question simply, when I gave that response earlier in the year, the circumstances were entirely different. But after that, events began to emerge that I never contemplated, that forced me to have a rethink, and it is that rethink that has brought me to this point now where I thought, after much consultations, that it is safer to go with the APC.

You’ve had so much development in terms of education, agriculture and other sectors when you were with the PDP. Now that you have aligned with the centre, what do we expect in terms of more development for the state?

For me, it is to expect more collaboration, more enhancement, more support to continue what we have started doing. I must be honest, we, we haven’t, we haven’t witnessed too much hostility from the federal government. You know, at least in the last one year plus, I think I’ve enjoyed considerable collaboration with the federal government.

But now that I’m part of the family, I expect that I will get even more enhanced collaboration in the future. What is emerging is that Plateau State is becoming like the jewel of the crown in the North Central, and I believe that all the potentials to harvest votes on the Plateau will be nurtured so that we can be able to deliver on the potential and produce that we hold.

You were at Ibadan at and you objected to the expulsion of some members, why was that? 

I objected out of principle because it was done surreptitiously. There was no conversation around it that I was privy to, and I felt it was a decision of such magnitude that should not just be taken by a few people. Moreover, I didn’t see the purpose it was going to achieve. It was only going to deepen the divide, and as you can see, the situation has worsened since then. If you followed the trend last week, there was a particular fiasco in the court, which is like walking into a trap, that before you get out of such entanglement, a lot of water has passed over the bridge. I thought it was a wrong strategy to take control of the party.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives made a predictable speech talking about reconciliation. When a new governor comes to the APC, there is a problem of harmonisation of the structures. How are you going to go about it so that you can continue to foster peace and harmony?

For us on the Plateau, we are lucky in the sense that the key gladiators that we would have had issues with have demonstrated sufficient understanding. Former Governor Lalong, who is my predecessor, publicly told the world that I am now the new leader. Once you have a leadership structure, it is not difficult to harmonise positions, and of course on my own part is to know that it is not the winner takes all. You have to have a likeness of hearts to ensure that all and sundry are accommodated under the same house.

Plateau is a PDP state and you got to power on the platform of PDP and now you are taking PDP to APC. Do you think the grassroots, those who according to what people are saying in PDP, are they part of this?

Absolutely. Let me give you a benefit of history. Even Chief Solomon Lar, the founding chairman of the PDP, you will remember, he was once ostracised from the PDP. He had to align with other political platforms. Governor Dariye contested the 2003 elections on the platform of the NPP when he felt short-changed in the PDP, and he came back in 2015 when Plateau people felt that there was a distortion in the zoning arrangement. They voted against the PDP. So yes, Plateau people have showed support for the PDP, but they are also rational voters, and they know when to trust the judgement of the leader. And I think that’s what we are enjoying now.

I can tell you many people may not necessarily be current members of the APC now, but they have shown commitment that wherever we go, they are with us. At the end of the day, it’s not party membership, it’s the voter support you need, because you have more voters than members of the party any day, any time. What we’ve done since we made the decision to cross over, we’ve been engaging the grassroots, and I think that so far the response has been wonderful. Many of them only wanted to be spoken to, to hear us explain the reasoning behind our shift.

 I tell you, many critical leaders of the state across the divides of faith and ethnicity have come to appreciate the rationale behind our decision. But we are not stopping here. We are continuing the engagement. I’ve been a grassroots politician since I came on board, so I know that energising your base or losing your base is dangerous. So we’re doing all we can to energise our base, and we’re going to intensify that in the days to come.

With this, what are the derivable, tangible things we can hold on to or expect to have with this?  The Vice President talked about Akwanga-Jos road just a moment ago. What are the other benefits?

Just a moment ago, I can tell you it’s now in the legal department of the Ministry of Works. They’re tidying up the contract for the contractor to sign, and I believe maybe in the next two to three weeks that should be done. The next is mobilisation for the contractor to go to site. It’s a project the President has assured me he is committed to, not just as one of those regular contracts, but one of the legacy projects, so we hope that it will get the requisite attention.

You did hear the Vice President also talk about starting investments in livestock development on the Plateau. That’s one of the reasons we’re determined to recover the Wase grazing reserve, which has been partly occupied by bandits. It’s a very rich reserve, both for livestock and minerals, and we’re doing all we can to recover that. But there are other initiatives. The beauty of the livestock is that it has the capacity to bring prosperity to our people. If we succeed with what we are planning to do in the next three to five years, you may not find any flooding on the Plateau because by then it will be needless.

We are trying to develop the entire value chain around livestock. If you talk about the silage, the feed, the grass they eat, it’s money in itself. If you talk about the milk, one of the things we’re lacking is self-sufficiency in milk production in this country. We’re still importing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of condensates. Presently, as I’m talking to you, there’s one of our private ranch owners here who already has about 200 cows. The least any of these cows is producing is 16 litres a day. Imagine that. A family has two cows producing even if it’s 10 litres a day each. Imagine the economic impact on that family.

Within this first quarter, we’re going to roll out the first test, where we want to do a proof of concept, where we cut down on scale, and we’re also building the new abattoir, which is going to become a slaughterhouse that can slaughter 500 cows a day. On what population that will eat all those, that tells you that there’s business to be done. So people have to develop the cattle lots. The fact that we’re starting, we may not finish the infrastructure until the next two years. In the meantime, we’re going to start the multiplication of cattle lots. The cattle feeds, everything will be going on simultaneously. So it’s one of the key economic drivers for us, apart from our initiatives in agriculture.

The third thing the Vice President mentioned was the immediate recruitment. I think we’re the first state to be allocated 1,000 slots for recruitment into the forest service. This is going to help us a lot because we’re going to have more boots on ground that will help us to return more IDPs to their communities, because we can’t return them without sufficient sustainability. So it’s going to have a lot of ripple effect, and we hope that if there are extra lodges for those who are in the family, we should be able to access them as well.

You said the President invited you. Are there guarantees? Is it not possible that you leave PDP and not get a ticket? Are there guarantees that when you come here you’ll be protected, and what other things are you going to benefit from?

The most important in any first-time government is guarantee of ticket for the second time. As you know, the tradition in Nigeria is that a serving President does not contest primaries with opponents. I am assured that not only me, but all the first-time governors in the APC, yes, there are some people contesting that decision, but I can almost guarantee you that the decision has been taken that by and large, every first-time governor will get his second-term ticket. 

If you listened to the National Chairman, he virtually made that commitment. I think the chances of it not being sincere are very remote, very, very remote. I’m confident that the President is a man of his word. But beyond that, we are not begging for tickets. With all sense of humility, we’ll bring value to the APC.

Plateau State is going to become one of his trump cards. Our potential is not restricted to the Plateau. A lot of the people in the Middle Belt look up to Plateau State for direction. When those votes are harnessed, we are talking about a voting population in excess of 10 million votes. There’s no politician who knows he has a hidden jackpot and wants to throw it away, and I think the President has a hidden jackpot on the Plateau.

Given the history of hostility between the two major parties, how do you expect to translate the energies they brought to conflict into positive development of the state? And how did you receive the endorsement from the National Chairman, given the history between the two of you?

Like the Vice President quoted Martin Luther, it gets to a point where you have to make a choice. Either we continue to fight or we make a decision to stop the fight. I’m persuaded that Professor Nentawe has seen the need for this fight to stop. There is no human calculation on earth that would have made him National Chairman. He understands it is divine providence. Same thing with me. In 2003, the odds were against me, fighting a candidate put up by a sitting government. If not for divine providence, I would not have had such massive support. We’ve learned to be content with what we have, appreciate what we know now, and work together. Conflict will not deliver votes. Collaboration will.

His endorsement was a welcome development. It came as a pleasant surprise to many watchers of politics on the Plateau. It put to rest fears that had held people back from committing to the APC. It has been reassuring and will energise supporters. People will see sincerity in this process. We must take our political destiny into our hands and ensure our votes count in national politics post-2027.