By Raymond Gukas, Jos
Plateau, Our Heritage, (POH), a budding pressure group in Plateau State is proposing an economic agenda for the present and future governments in the state on measures of shoring up its revenue base to enhance the well being of the people.
The POH has since opened debate on the way forward; bearing in mind, the agricultural and industrial potentials the northern, southern and central senatorial zones in the state boast of.
A participant, Ali Maina recalled that though, this may not be the first time an idea in this direction would be mooted out, the fact remains that governments after governments continued to jettison such, perhaps because the idea was not firmly rooted for implementation.
He said, “in the late 80s under military Administrator, Chris Alli, every LGA earmarked an industrial area and had a launch for its development but nothing came out of it after Chris Alli left. I believe nature has already helped us with a road map where it has shown us the comparative advantage of each of the 3 zones wherein: Northern zone had advantage of perishable crops like tomatoes, cabbage, spinach and other groceries; the central has advantage in the production of Irish potatoes and maize while the south has a natural advantage in the production of rice and yams.”
Added to this, virtually every household is into livestock production; especially poultry in both modern and free range, and he asked, “how can plateau harness and maximize these advantages?”
However, Helen Dabup welcomed this initiative and added that she “understand that SMEDAN is working with LGAs in the area of industrialization based on their location and production capacities.”
J. S. Akuns, then cautioned that the classification of the state “into economic zones” may not be a viable incentive to unlock the many economic potentials of the state; especially that the subsistence nature of crop farming & the size of farm holding is not likely to survive such classification.
This, he opined was due to absence of a “robust agro allied industrial base, seasonal price fluctuations of farm produce and absence of a post harvest farm-price support system”, which; the “economic potentials of the state, though many, are are largely agro-based that have remained untapped.
Another reason he pointed at, was that the market for farm produce “is internally localised in myriad market places in the state, thus depressing farm incomes and also livestock production which was also subsistence in size of stockholding and is lacking of enabling infrastructure cum viable value chains.”
To sum up his submission, he stressed that “overall, the agriculture baseline value chains of production, storage, processing & marketing will unleash the ‘latent force’ that will optimise the economic potentials of plateau state”, but with other variables in electricity, energy & rule of law that are expected to play complimentary roles in sustaining the released economic ‘force’ for an enduring prosperity of our heritage.
Yakubu Taddy was in agreement with issues raised, stating however that “we already have something to start the Plateau economic project with- local knowledge” especially that the platform has a range of professionals in various fields and can change the narrative by directly getting involved as professionals from all angles and “balancing our western education with our local knowledge.”
Danjuma Maina praised the articulation of key issues, but stressed that the challenges is in the Government involvement with respect to the needed policies enablements.
According to him, “may I too add that as a way forward, the inculcation of Public, Private Partnership(PPP), involving the services of international and Local Partners is another. In doing so, the involvement of some identified committed professionals to drive the process in the (PPP)synergy giving awareness/orientation capacity and possibly funding support as an incentives, to some of our identified potential rural agro raw materials growers to step up efforts.”
“The key to economic progression in any society is enforcement of its laws. All the ideas being proposed here are good and doable but it requires the putting in place of stringent laws that would guide us through it”, Alex Kwapnoe emphasized.
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