Several Plateau people feel aggrieved that the PDP flag bearer has emerged from the Northern Senatorial zone – and as such they have vowed to give protest votes to APC – a party which has never held power in Plateau.

This protestations by people mainly from the Southern and to an extent the Central zones is within the framework of democracy and as such a legal right.

On the flip side, some people in the Northern zone argue that there is nothing like “its our turn” and that the race should be open to who so ever can emerge – again, within the democratic purview, that is again a principle which would help our democracy thrive and flourish into maturity.

Several Plateau people feel aggrieved that the PDP flag bearer has emerged from the Northern Senatorial zone – and as such they have vowed to give protest votes to APC – a party which has never held power in Plateau.

This protestations by people mainly from the Southern and to an extent the Central zones is within the framework of democracy and as such a legal right.

On the flip side, some people in the Northern zone argue that there is nothing like “its our turn” and that the race should be open to who so ever can emerge – again, within the democratic purview, that is again a principle which would help our democracy thrive and flourish into maturity.

Within the context of democratic governance in a society like ours, these two opposing schools-of-thoughts are never “absolute” -they are simply view points which are polar and opposite. And to that end, several politicians and stakeholders on the various ends of the spectrum have put forward reasons and counter reasons why their candidates should be voted – these reasons have largely been subjective and sentimental, ranging from area of origin, ancestory etc.

As important as these reasons can be, they becloud the argument about the capabilities of the candidates and whether or not they have the capacity to perform or not. These very subjective arguments  are typically devoid of objectivity and ladened with emotion and empathy as opposed to substantial facts or evidence.

In this article, I shall attempt to depart from these usual sentimental/subjective outlooks and employ mathematical indices and data in an attempt to rank, benchmark and score the candidates against each other.

Having said that, I shall pause to quickly to give a sound disclaimer at this point – the views expressed in this article are simply my own thoughts -i fully understand that if someone else were to undertake similar exercise -the results may be different, so by no means am I asserting that these are the absolute rankings – they are simply my outlooks on how I think we should be assessing our candidates.

The views expressed would be contentious, they would be controversial and perhaps not in consonant with what you the reader (may think or want to see), but as I said, this is the benefit of individuality.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let me state that the objectivity of this analysis is only as far as the source of the data i.e. public domain data and the research conducted by speaking to several individuals and stakeholders who know the candidates. So all the data utilised in this study are purely, from the individual candidate’s campaign website, discussion with stakeholders and the Nigerian press.

The analysis would assist Plateau people who are still undecided and who may want to pick their candidates based on objective parameters to make informed decisions on whom to vote based on clear indices and criteria as defined below.

Note: the criteria chosen for this assessment were carefully chosen to enhance the detailed assessment of all candidates using common indices. Some of the criteria are polar opposites of each other – this is a deliberate action in order to minimize ambiguity and enhance statistical reliability.

Statisticians and pedants might argue about the objectivity of the data, since the data is largely discrete and not continuous, but you’d agree that continuous data for these sets of criteria do not exist. The scoring of candidates will be based on a non-linear scale as described below, with positive attributes receiving high scores while negative attributes will receive low ones.

Un-achieved/no record/un-acceptable————————-———0

Fair ——————————————————————————1

Good—————————————————————————-3

Excellent ———————————————————————-9

The candidates scored in this analysis are:

(1) Rt. Hon Simon Lalong – APC

(2) Senator GNS Pwajok  – PDP

(3) Amb. Bagudu Hirse    – LP

	Rt. Hon. Simon Lalong	GNS Pwajok	Amb. Bagudu Hirse
Experience in Governance (both at State or Federal levels)	9	9	9
Clear Manifesto/Action plan	1	3	1
Crisis Management (Record/Capacity of handling religious or ethnic crisis)	9	3	3
Service Delivery (Candidate’s performance in previous roles -Is there any evidence to show that the candidate performed over and above?	3	3	3
Adeptness with 21st Century Modus Operandi (Use of Technology, Social Media etc)	3	9	3
Indepth understanding of Plateau State’s problems – Understanding of Security, Economic and political challenges)	9	9	9
Trust Worthiness (Evidence of a candidate going back over his word)	3	1	3
Incorruptability (Is the candidate easily corrupted? Is or was the candidate on EFCC list?)	1	9	9
Honesty/Integrity (Is there any evidence to show that the candidate doesn’t have integrity?)	3	1	3
Public Service Record (How is the candidate’s public service record perceived?)	3	3	9
Political Associates (Who are the candidate’s political friends/Godfathers/Sponsors)	3	3	9
Will to take tough decisions (Independent mindedness, Grit, Execution &  Responsibility)	9	3	3
Source of Campaign funds (Who are the candidates sponsors?)	1	1	3
Experience in other roles/professions (aside politics)	9	3	9
Ideas generation capacity (Problem solving capability)	3	9	3
Age (Is the candidate too senile to lead?)	9	9	3
Controversies (Past scandals, whether political, ethnic, religious etc)	1	1	3
Mastery of politics (political savviness)	3	1	9
Education (Secondary, University or PhD)	3	9	3
Running Mate (Does the running mate complement the candidate?)	9	9	3
Youth Focus – Emphasis on the youth and their development	3	9	3
Is the candidate simply a career politician who has been doing politics all his/her life or do they have a profession/trade they can fall back to.	9	9	3
	33.02%	33.33%	33.68%

Analysis of the Results

All three candidates are very evenly matched – with little to choose from one over the other. Each candidate scored approximately a third of the total points and given the margin of error in this analysis (which is of the magnitude of + or – 5%), it shows that they are well and truly matched.

Rationale behind the scoring for some of the parameters are described below. Note, not all of the parameters have been expanded/explained because of the wordiness of this article.

Experience in Governance (both at State or Federal levels)

All three candidates have held lofty positions of authority in Government and therefore each scored maximum points (9) under this criteria.

Simon Lalong was the past speaker of the House of Assembly in Plateau and eventually rose to be the chairman of the speaker’s council of Nigeria (hence his closeness with Rotimi Amaechi who was at the time the speaker of the rivers state assembly).

GNS Pwajok rose through the ranks from a university lecturer to DG Research for the Government house, to Chief of Staff and eventually the Senator representing Plateau North in the Senate.

Bagudu Hirse held several positions at the federal level, including being a Minister of State for foreign affairs, Ambassador to Namibia (1999 – 2004), Non Executive Director at the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) and several others.

Crisis Management (Record/Capacity of handling religious or ethnic crisis)

Simon Lalong scored the highest in this category because he demonstrated his ability to deal with political crisis during the botched impeachment plot of Chief Joshua Dariye. Simon Lalong (the then Speaker) and his deputy speaker Alh. Usman Zumunta refused to yield to pressure from Abuja (specifically from Nasir Mantu) -in respect of impeaching Dariye and as such demonstrated his capacity handle political difficulties. In a way, others may construe this as a weakness, but we have scored it as a positive in this analysis.

The other candidates have not demonstrated such capacity -not because they cannot deal with crisis/difficulties, but perhaps because such an opportunity to demonstrate their mettle has not presented itself. And since this analyses is based on facts and evidence, they have scored lowly because of the lack of evidence.

Adeptness with 21st Century Modus Operandi (Use of Technology, Social Media etc)

Given the changing landscape of the world – this is an important metric, because it shows that such a person will continue evolve his/her leadership in response to changing global trends.

In this category, only GNS Pwajok scores highly (9) because of his online presence -the other candidates have not demonstrated any penchant for social interaction online and have been scored low. This goes beyond simply having a twitter account or a Facebook account -what we have tried to underscore here is a personal presence online and not simply having an account which other people manage on behalf of a candidate.

Trust Worthiness (Evidence of a candidate going back over his word)

Simon Lalong and Bagudu Hirse score points higher than GNS because they have not been embroiled in controversies of character. This is not to say that GNS Pwajok has been, but there have been repeated accusations of ethnic bias etc, now and even though, this is not pertinent to GNS Pwajok himself as a person. He has ranked lower on this trust index, in comparison to the other two candidates.

Incorruptability (Is the candidate easily corrupted? Is or was the candidate on EFCC list?)

Simon Lalong was arrested by the EFCC following the impeachment debacle. This singular fact has determined the low score on this parameter. Now, I must clarify that his arrest may have been politically motivated, but the fact remains that he was arrested and the other two have no -and since this analysis only deals in evidence -this is the reason for his lower score. Note: This does not mean the other two may not be under EFCC consideration, but the fact remains there is no evidence to show that they have been called in by the EFCC.

Source of Campaign funds (Who are the candidates sponsors?)

Bugudu Hirse scored the highest in this category, mainly because no clear-cut funding source can be gleaned from his candidature. He appears to be self funded and so has been ascribed the highest score. For GNS Pwajok (being the who is the Government backed candidate), it is difficult to demonstrate independent funding separate to the machinery of Government and as such he was scored lowly. Same for Simon Lalong, who has consistently been a close associate of Rotimi Amaechi, for whom many believe is funding his campaign.

Ideas generation capacity (Problem solving capability)

This is traditionally an area of strength for GNS Pwajok -his capacity to analyse complex issues and come up with new/functional ideas and concepts has been shown in previous work as Director of Research. Again, this in not to say other candidates lack this capacity, it is simply a case where such evidence has not been seen.

Mastery of politics (political savviness)

Bagudu Hirse, having been in politics for over 3 decades leads in this area. He has been a serial runner for Plateau state governorship. And even though he has not won, he succeeded in serially being compensated with political appointments. The other two aspirants are relatively new entrants into politics.

Education (Secondary, University or PhD)

Bagudu Hirse bagged a degree in Media/Journalism from ABU and has not advanced his education since -the same can be said of Simon Lalong who is a equally a graduate of ABU. GNS Pwajok is currently enrolled part time for PhD studies, hence assessed higher than the others.

Is the candidate simply a career politician who has been doing politics all his/her life or do they have a profession/trade they can fall back to.

Bagudu Hirse, even though a trained journalist who practiced at the earlier parts of his career as an editor at PRTVC and Standard appears to only be firmly in politics currently thus, he scores lower marks. Simon Lalong is a trained barrister, who runs a chamber and as such scored highly with GNS Pwajok who was a university lecturer and is currently furthering his education.

Some of the links used to undertake this research include :

http://emm.newsexplorer.eu/NewsExplorer/entities/BE/4158.html

http://emm.newsexplorer.eu/NewsExplorer/clusteredition/en/20060206,vanguardngr-e2935ecbd6bf2bf6fb8527cde62a49ff.html

http://emm.newsexplorer.eu/NewsExplorer/clusteredition/en/20060826,vanguardngr-59b895d1fb78d6b07a24cb8c39719a04.html

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Benchmarking and assessment of the 3 Plateau Gubernatorial Candidates