Who calls the shot in Taraba?

The two months absence of Governor Danbaba Danfulani Suntai due to air crash is creating ripples in Taraba state. Weekly Trust was in Taraba to gauge the impulse created by this absence, the conflicting reports over his state of health, the capacity of the acting governor as well as the emerging political intrigues.

The state capital Jalingo looks usually normal with people going about their normal business, but what dominates their conversation, usually in hush tones, is the state of health of the governor, Danfulani Suntai, who was involved in an air crash and had to be flown to an undisclosed hospital in Germany for treatment in the last two months.
Deserted secretariat

The state civil service was equally not exempted from feeling the pulse of the governor's continued absence. On Thursday, the state secretariat that houses most of the state's ministries on Thursday around 10:40am, had very fewer vehicles at the premises and the balcony of the three-storey complex was almost deserted.

Most of the offices were closed and there were no sign of activities in the various ministries. Most of the workers available were the junior ones, mostly clustered around television sets in their various ministries' waiting rooms.

But a civil servant who didn't want to be named told Weekly Trust that "the secretariat was never a centre of bee-hive of activities since the ascension of the ailing governor. Suntai has successfully starved them of funds. They don't give out contracts. Very few of them organize events now. Politicians and contractors alike don't patronize the ministries, because nothing is actually happening."

Regime of the cabal

The information flow of the governor's actual state of health, according to some political stakeholders in Taraba, is controlled by a cabal who "benefits from the governor's continued absence."

A People Democratic Party (PDP)'s chieftain in the state, Alhaji Danjuma Isa Munga accused Suntai's close associates of concealing information about his health to the people of the state. "It is ridiculous that his aides who never travel to Germany are busy telling us that they spoke with him (Suntai) on phone while the actual people who went to Germany are either keeping quiet or saying the opposite," Munga told Weekly Trust in Jalingo.

"Some of them went to the extent of saying that they went to Germany and saw the governor taking kunu (oats) and he'll come back by first week of February. Whereas the likes of Governor Gabriel Suswam said his condition is pathetic," he said.