A stalwart of All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Richard Tersoo Mnenga, has said that dialogue and diplomacy are the best options for resolving security challenges in Benue State, including farmer-herder clashes, which have rendered many homeless.
Mnenga stated this in Abuja at an interactive session with newsmen, where he announced his intention to contest for the governorship of Benue State in the 2023 general elections under the platform of APC.
A former National Organising Secretary of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Mnenga vowed to tackle the challenges of education, insecurity, infrastructure and restore the state on the path of progress through improved and mechanised agriculture.
Mnenga who is a current member of Governing Board of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and Governing Council of Federal University, Otueke, Bayelsa State, said he leveraged his experience garnered over the years to revamp the education sector in the state.
He noted that as a member representing the North-Central zone in UBEC board, “We have travelled to many countries, to do a comparative analysis on their basic education and that of ours so as to know how to improve on it and there were some basic innovations we have brought to basic education to Nigeria.
”If you must properly train a child, you must start from the basic education and my experience in UBEC, I will do that very well, but my manifesto will inform you better,” he said.
He decried the level of insecurity in the state, saying there was urgent to find a lasting solution to it through diplomacy and dialogue, especially with Northern elders on ending farmer-herder clashes which have rendered some indigenes of the state homeless.
He said: “Our greatest challenge in Benue state is insecurity but through proper consultation, we can be able to put it to an end. If the criminal activities are curtailed, farmers can go to farm so that economy will be improved”.
An author and currently a Law student with Baze University, Abuja after his second degree from Switzerland, Mnenga said he is intellectually equipped to do the job of creating a paradigm shift in Benue State that had suffered so much from an infrastructural deficit and youth unemployment.
He expressed sadness that most of the roads in the state are unmotorable and in deplorable condition, expressing confidence that if given the opportunity to manage the state in 2023, one of his priorities would be to open up the roads across the state so as to boost commerce, industrialisation, and agriculture that the state is known for.
He said: “None of us here fly to Benue state, we all go by road. When was Nasarawa created but when you pass through it to Benue, you will weep for Benue state because of the rate of development in Nasarawa.”
He noted that Benue is blessed and endowed with many resources but that the state is backward because “we have not been able to tap into the resources for the development and good of people of the state.
Mnenga further stated that Benue has been known as an agricultural state, hence the need to focus on the provision of dams for irrigation farming as obtainable in some states in the North, adding that irrigation does not only increase yields but also encourage dry season farming.
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