The Plateau Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr Ephraim Usman, has pledged commitment to restructure the ministry toward better performance.
He gave the assurance during the ministry’s official handing over ceremony in Jos on Tuesday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that on Aug. 4, Gov. Caleb Mutfwang, inaugurated the state’s Executive Council, resulting to handing over in various ministries
The commissioner restated commitment to upgrade the ministry, noting that he would not deviate from the set mandate but work to elevate its performance.
“I am here, representing his excellency, Gov. Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State, with a clear cut mandate to adhere strictly to the mandate of this ministry and to work assiduously for the success of this administration.
“This is a new government and the assurance is; all the seven departments in this ministry will be functional, none of them will be redundant, take me by my word.
“I have come with innovations; we are going to put our heads together, we will x-ray and look at the past, we will definitely look at the present and will come up with innovations.
“We cannot continue adopting the normal way of doing things. We are going to work, all the departments are going to sit up, so that we can deliver good governance to the people of Plateau and the ministry,” he said.
Earlier, Mr Sunday Dagwom, Permanent Secretary in the ministry, while conducting the handing over processes, said the ministry was elated to receive the commissioner.
Dagwom highlighted some of the challenges of the ministry that would require the commissioner’s prompt action to include; pending litigations in court on chieftaincy matters, resulting to unoccupied chieftaincy stools.
“We welcome our honourable commissioner today and we are happy to hand over to our commissioner who has been designated to the ministry.
“The mandate of this ministry must be achieved, we are aware that the governor has emphasised that, ”the land is green, and the time is now”, which is in line with aspirations to solve some of the challenges that the state is facing.
“So, in this regard sir, we have problems of shortage of manpower, our whole ministry has only 26 staff, and this is very inadequate, that is why we have engaged casual workers to assist us.
“We have numerous pending litigations in court on chieftaincy matters, this is a very critical area and very sensitive,” he said.
The permanent secretary said that the ministry hopes to look at the issue so that stools that had not been filled would be occupied and the issues that led to the problems are amicably resolved. (NAN)
