TARABA NEEDS A FRESH START WITH AGBU KEFAS

By Iliyasu Gadu

 

The incoming Governor of Taraba state, Lt. Colonel Agbu KEFAS (Rtd) who will mount the saddle of leadership in the state on Monday May 29, 2023 to succeed Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku, has his work cut out for him. 

 

He will be inheriting a state weighed down heavily by a myriad of problems and challenges mainly;

 

Huge debts in the neighbourhood of hundreds of billions of naira

 

Insecurity especially in the Southern Zone where both the incoming and outgoing governor hail from

 

Infrastructure deficit in terms of roads etc

 

But Taraba has to its credit boundless endowment in human and material resources that if harnessed properly will take the state right up there as among the top performing states in the country. 

 

I have had taken time to assess Agbu KEFAS through his speeches, his engagements with different shades and groups of people within and outside the state. I have also studied his body language very critically. People who have interacted with him as well as to those who have known him since his days as a student in GSS Wukari. And some of his colleagues and seniors in the army. Also persons in the Warri/Bayelsa axis where he served as an Intelligence Officer. 

 

I have come away with the picture of someone who wants to be understood as having come to make a difference in the governance of Taraba. 

Knowing the circumstances in which he came to power he may want to assuage the minds of those who would judge him as coming to continue with the status quo of disunity and underdevelopment in Taraba. 

 

If incoming Governor KEFAS means what he says from the bottom of his heart that he wants to genuinely engage the people of Taraba state so we can all join hands despite our diversity to lift the state from what it is now, then we can only pray and wish him well. 

 

But for him to succeed in this noble endeavour, our incoming Governor must undertake to turn a new leaf. This journey he wants to embark on will only work with fresh faces. He must be bold and innovative. He must think and work out of the box. He should not allow himself to inherit the baggage of the years before him. As a man with military training and experience especially in the Intelligence corps, he knows that the success of a military operation depends to a large extent on the quality of the men engaged in that operation. 

 

How many times in his work in the Warri axis did he have to thank not just the quality of the Intelligence at his disposal but also the quality of men under him? This is what makes the difference between success and failure, as well as life and death. 

 

Governing Taraba will be a much more complex task than chasing after pipeline bandits and oil thieves in the creeks of Niger Delta. Whereas in Warri it is straightforward task with strictly defined rules of engagement with chain of command, In Taraba he is the boss of whose table the buck stop. And he will be ruling a very complex state with banana peels strewn all over his path. 

 

So he needs to be his own man, chose his own team, task them, supervise them while they are at it and take responsibility for their mistakes as well as their successes. 

 

For the collective good of Taraba we pray and hope Agbu KEFAS succeeds.