Lalong is Selling Plateau for Personal Financial Gains, Says Jang

By Seriki Adinoyi in Jos

The senator representing Plateau North in the National Assembly, Jonah David Jang, has berated Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State for insisting on selling out Plateau land for grazing reserve in spite of the outcry against it by the people of state, alleging that the governor’s attraction is the financial inducement.

The senator has also challenged the governor to publish the alleged document where he endorsed grazing reserve policy in the state throughout his eight-year tenure of his government.

In a statement signed by the Senator’s Media Aide, Comrade Clinton Garuba, the governor has been urged to emulate his Benue State counterpart, Dr. Sam Ortom, who “not even the harassment by state agent was able to stop him in collaboration with his people from outlawing anything that is detrimental to the wellbeing of his people.”

Jang lamented that, “It is unfortunate that Plateau State has found itself with a government that is willing to sacrifice its future in the mould of the biblical Esau who forfeited his birth right for a meal of porridge. We have heard the government say, it is keying into the policy for the benefit of the money made available for the implementation of the policy.

“One is taken aback that the chief executive officer of a state does not even know what is in the best interest of his state but is only concerned about the financial inducement attached to a policy that has the potential to wreck s deadly blow on his people.

Denying that he was the one that mobilize his people to protest against the grazing reserve policy, Jang noted that “those who have rejected the policy are not a single tribe in the state as alluded to by the governor in his remarks at the Villa”, adding that the entire Plateau tribes rose up against the unpopular policy.

“Senator Jang had left an example with the Butura Milky Way Farm on how ranches could be built and managed not the current plan to use federal government’s money to acquire land for herdsmen in whatever guise as is being done by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with conniving governors,” the statement added.