Chairman, Senate Committee on National Planning, Economic Affairs and Poverty Eradication, Senator Barnabas Gemade
A former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Barnabas Gemade, has described governors elected under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party as a band of reckless and insensitive people.
He accused the governors of engaging in frivolous expenditure while the people they were elected to govern were suffering untold deprivation.
Gemade spoke in Jos on Tuesday at a public lecture organised by friends of the Governor-elect of Plateau State, Mr. Simon Lalong, as part of activities marking the transition programme.
He expressed gratitude to Nigerians and particular the people of Plateau State for voting out what he described as an uncaring government.
The former PDP chairman, who is now a senator-elect under the platform of the All Progressives Congress, who was represented by Mr. Ben Gwarzo, said that while they failed to pay salaries to workers, the PDP governors also looked the other way as marauders masquerading as herdsmen were killing people with reckless abandon.
He said, “Governors elected under the PDP were very reckless and uncaring and while they embark on frivolous expenditure, they left civil servants with months of unpaid salaries. I am happy that the people of Nigeria and Plateau State voted out uncaring and insensitive governments both at the national and state levels.”
A guest speaker, Mr. Haroun Audu, decried what he described as the insensitivity of the Jonah Jang-led administration that, he claimed had thrown the people into living in apartheid-like habitation.
He said that one of the challenges of the incoming administration would be how to bring back the glory of the state, especially the one envisaged by the founding fathers led by the late Joseph Gomwalk.
He said that what Plateau State had witnessed in the last eight years was discrimination in all areas of life, including implementation of projects, adding that even the personal disposition of the governor was divisive.
Audu said, “I however argue and maintain that the personal disposition of leadership and here I speak of the governing authority led by the governor represents a vital component in advancing and sustaining community confidence in any peace process.
“In a situation where the private and public body language of the leader oozes discrimination in speech and conduct; where a leader is plainly biased in his choice of public project interventions and where he or she brazenly displays an arrogant disdain for the faith and /or ethnic origin of other people, then I am afraid and not too sure that the societal peace, harmony and the expected restoration of intercommunity relationship will take root.”
Speaking on ‘Plateau State Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,’ he urged the incoming administration “to embrace all irrespective of class, ethnic or religious affiliation and to ensure that it intervenes in health, education, environment and infrastructure.”