Women in Plateau state have stage a protest in respect of the much flogged grazing reserves issue. Like their youthful counterparts who protested at Rayfield yesterday, the women marched the streets of Jos with various inscriptions – denouncing the inclusion of Plateau in the grazing policy, while calling on the state Government to rescind such decision.

Wearing black and singing songs of unity, the women were vehement in their rejection of the grazing plans. They called on government to act swiftly and accordingly – saying posterity will judge our actions if we mortgage our future for trivial gains of today.

Rounding up the protest, the women passed their message to the speaker of the House of Assembly, Mr. Peter Azi who came out and addressed them, donning a white strippy kaftan. He promised to translate their message to legislative and the executive arms of government – stressing that a  consultative approach has to be adopted.

With Governor Lalong currently in London, reactions with regards his outlook and view of the protests that have trailed the grazing policy cannot not be ascertained, but the protesters were confident that their message would be passed across to him.

A public affairs analyst, who spoke to ViewPointNigeria’s correspondent at the venue of the protest opined that the state government volunteered Plateau state into the grazing plans simply because of the loans and grants which have been promised for states who key into the policy. He said, “because Plateau is in a desperate financial state, where governance is now almost impossible, it has become important that the state explores ways of getting out of the economic logjam through loans and grants where possible. Speaking further, he said the financial resources of the state has decreased significantly, with subvention at its lowest level for the last 10 years and that the Internally generated revenue only amounted to approx. 750 million per month, as such the state is struggling to meet civil servant’s salary burden of N1.6 billion monthly”. And that if you add the costs of running the government on top of the civil servants salary burden, you’d see that the state cannot meet its financial obligations.

He said of particular challenge is the very high “debt servicing burden” of the state (i.e., monthly loan repayment of past loans). Saying after removing such debt service amounts from the federal subvention, what is left to the state is only paltry and insufficient and so the state has to explore alternative revenue sources.

He said, even though loans are available at banks, the poor credit rating of the state has meant that its credit worthiness to secure such loans has put it in a difficult position. He said, Lalong as the leader of the state – is having to look for investors who can plough money into the state in order to get the economy moving again.

Pictures of today’s protests are below:

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Women protest grazing reserves policy in Jos