Peoples Democratic Party PDP in Plateau State yesterday described
Governor Simon Bako Lalong’s two-year administration as a failure,
saying the state is worst off since the APC took over power.
PDP Chairman in the state, Damishi Sango, in a press briefing in
Jos, described the Lalong-led administration as not to have done
anything comparatively close to the achievements of the PDP.
Sango told journalists that: “It is obvious that these two years of
the APC have only gone a long way to confirm that, truly, Lalong is just
an accidental governor who came without a vision and, therefore, has
had no mission accomplished.”
Sango said it was unfortunate that two years after, the APC
government in Plateau State could only boast of the return of peace to
the state, payment of salaries and continuation of projects of the
previous administration.
“The administration has been marked by uncanny excuses for
non-performance. The administration is eager to take loans from banks
while still complaining that his predecessor had left him with huge
debts,” he alleged.
Sango challenged the APC government to come up with answers to the
whereabouts of “N97bn the government received in its first year, the
N18bn loan taken from commercial banks, the N4.5b spent on exotic cars,
N1.4b on placing tracking devices on government cars and why the
government spent N155m on insuring cars when the financial regulations
do not allow for the insurance of government cars.”
However, the Senior Special Assistant to the governor on Media and
Publicity, Mark Longyen, yesterday, countered Sango’s allegations in a
statement emailed to journalists, insisting that the PDP had chosen to
dwell on falsehood.
Longyen noted that in the last two years: “Governor Lalong has run an
open-door government with transparency and accountability as its
watchword, and details of all our financial transactions have often been
publicly presented from time to time.”
He said the governor had disclosed during his town hall meeting that
the total revenue that accrued to the state in two years was just over
N52 billion, IGR inclusive.
“So it is sheer political mischief to say government squandered over N121billion,” he said.