Tarabans urge Governor Agbu to pay more attention to stomach infrastructure
Sylvanus Viashima, Jalingo
As Taraba State Governor Dr Kefas Agbu marks a Hundred days in office, a section of the people have called on him to pay more attention to alleviating hunger in the state.
Some of the people who spoke to our correspondent said that the governor has done well by declaring free primary and secondary education and slashing of tuition at the state owned University by half, but the physical hunger is overwhelming and requires urgent attention.
Malam Suleiman Yahaya told our correspondent that “for me, I will say that the governor have not started working yet. The people are hungry. Most families don’t have food to eat. Infact, it is only kunu that I have been surviving on for the past three days. Imagine if I had a family here.
“So for me, the governor should forget about projects now and address the problem of hunger first. People are hungry and a hungry man is an angry man”.
Another resident Joseph Kuuga observed that there is looming danger of escalation in petty crime in the state of the issue of hunger is not urgently addressed.
“My fear is that, all these hungry idle boys roaming the streets may become major nuisance to us very soon if something is not done urgently. If you go around town, you will notice that there are too many young people on the streets. This is not a good sign.
“Most families can not feed. The cost of foodstuffs is simply beyond the ordinary persons now. An average worker in the state earns less than Fifty Thousand Naira and a bag of Maize now sells for over Sixty Thousand Naira. So how will they survive? So for me, what I expect from the governor is for him to forget about building roads and all the other big projects they do to impress people and focus on feeding the people first.
“At the rate it is going, if nothing is done expediently, people may resort to even vandalize the physical infrastructure just to get something and eat. Already, you can see that most of the poles on the main road are been vandalized and the cables taken out. This is a sign of worse things to come if care is not taken” Kuuga observed.
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Other residents who spoke to our correspondent noted that, the palliatives from the Federal Government that was shared recently either did not get to them or was too little to make any impact and call on the state government to do more to address the problem of hunger.
Our correspondent recall that the immediate past Governor of the state Architect Darius Ishaku advised Dr Agbu to focus more on stomach infrastructure as he was adjudged to have failed because he focused more on physical infrastructure.
“Let me advice you to focus more on stomach infrastructure. That is the main problem of the people. I am leaving office today and if you ask the people, they will tell you that Ishaku was not a good governor. That is because I focused more on physical infrastructural development. Don’t repeat the same mistake” Ishaku advised Agbu on the night he was declared winner of the governorship election in the state.
