Gyang Bere, Jos
Plateau State governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Senator representing Plateau South, Gen. Jeremiah Useni (retd) has alleged that Governor Simon Lalong has being feeding President Muhammadu Buhari with lies on the persistent insecurity in the state.
He says that Lalong had being singing songs that there is peace on the Plateau while innocent women and children are being killed daily.
Useni, who disclosed this on Sunday while briefing journalists on the preparations for the general elections in the state, said he has informed Buhari that Lalong had being feeding him with wrong information about the Plateau insecurity.
“Lalong said since he took over government, Plateau had been very peaceful, and the president was in Jos that night in March 2018 when 27 people were killed.
“I was told that Senator Joshua Dariye disappeared that night because they killing was going on in his local government.
“But when I met the president, I told him that the governor was not telling him the truth; I told him that when he was in Plateau and while the dinner was going on, the governor was telling you that Plateau was peaceful but yet 27 people were killed that night.”
He said his administration would resettle all the youths and Internally Displaced Persons from the IDP camps to their homes to provide food for the state when he became governor.
“Looking at the issues of killings in the state, if we don’t return displaced youths and women in time, there will be hunger in the state. We should say the truth so that we can get help; we will make sure we return these people as uickly as possible,“ he stated.
But in a swift reaction, Plateau State governor Simon Lalong, through the spokesman of the APC Gubernatorial Campaign Council, Hon. Ayuba Pam, refuted the allegations and said the present government had brought relative peace to the state.
“Plateau State has enjoyed uninterrupted peace under Lalong’s administration for three years until the last skirmishes that erupted in some villages. Lalong has brought three barracks to Plateau State with the consent of the president to halt insecurity and he has succeeded in bringing relative.”
He noted that Jeremiah Useni was the Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Defence but he never raised a strong motion to condemn the insecurity in Plateau, saying that nobody could contest the fact that Plateau had enjoyed relative peace under Lalong’s administration.
He stressed that the APC government had made effort to relocate IDPs who were displaced since 2001 in the state and assured that all those displaced would be taken back to their homes.