“Facts are facts and will never disappear on account of emotions”- Wole Soyinka.

My attention was recently drawn to series of conjectures, half truths, innuendoes and bare faced fabricated allegations against my person on the social media on the aforementioned subject matter. Ordinarily, I would have ignored the unsubstantiated allegations as they only exist in the imagination of the author but on a second thought, as the Chairman of the great, discerning, wonderful, wondrous and supportive people of Mikang Local Government, I owe you the need to set the record straight.

Firstly, open secret that Mikang Local Government is divided into four major districts: Montol (the largest district and headquarters of Mikang), Garkawa, Piapung and Koenoen.

Since I came on board as the Executive Chairman of Mikang LGA, I have tried my best to imbibe equity and fair play as a guiding principle by giving everyone a sense of belonging. Let me give a background to the issue

The Ministry of Environment years ago drew our attention to the lopsidedness and imbalance in the recruitment of the 150 widows into the ministry of local government, an exercise that predates this administration. I ran a fact check and discovered that true to their claim, the recruitment was not only lopsided but it was dominated by males as well as non widows. While Montol with the highest population in Mikang had 33 beneficiaries, Garkawa had 84, Piapung had no beneficiary, while Koenoen district had 33. You can see that this is not balance.

As a democrat, I tabled the matter at the Local Government Executive Council meeting where all the districts were represented. We discussed and agreed to correct the imbalance in the interest of equity and fair play which are the two guiding principles of democracy. We resolved to return the program in tandem with its philosophy of empowering widows. We agreed that all male folks that benefited from the scheme will be disengaged and given the opportunity to be captured in the Federal Government 1,000 NDE recruitment per Local Government. We also agreed that no widow should be affected in the reform, rather, widows should replace the male beneficiaries of the scheme.

This singular act gave us the opportunity to engage more widows into the scheme, contrary to the claim that we disengaged widows, we rather engage more widows, in order to correct the lopsidedness and anomalous arrangement in the scheme and Piapung district that hitherto had no representation now has 20 widows as beneficiaries. Montol the administrative headquarters, that hitherto had just 33 beneficiaries now has 60 as the district with the highest population. In Garkawa, I gave a directive that if all the 84 beneficiaries in the district are widows, the status quo must remain as it is not in my character to disengage widows. We however discovered that out of the 84 beneficiaries from Garkawa district, only 38 were widows. We thereafter maintained the 38 widows and added two widows to make Garkawa have 40 beneficiaries.
In Koenoen district, we maintained all the thirty widows that were already recruited and only removed the three male beneficiaries.
This exercise is meant to correct and carry every one along in the usual spirit of the Mikang people. Everybody must be given a sense of belonging and no widow would be laid off. Infact, on Tuesday 21st July, 2020, all widows are expected to be at the Local Government Secretariat for verification. 
Since I became the Executive Chairman of Mikang Local Government, I have ensured that all the districts have a project. This can be verified by those at the grassroots.

In Garkawa for example, we built a Primary Health Clinic at Jimakwi, and a warehouse at Garkawa market to boost the economic potentials of our people. We also dug nine boreholes to improve access to water and hygiene of our people. We installed two brand new transformers to illuminate and electrify the area and replaced vandalized electricity poles in choice areas of Garkawa district. We facilitated the construction of street lights in selected areas in Garkawa. I can say unequivocally that Garkawa is one district that has benefited infrastructurally more than even my own village Lalin.
It is open secret that both my Deputy and the Chief of Staff are from Garkawa. I have two supervisory councillors and a deputy who is in charge of works making three from the great Garkawa. This is in addition to two Senior Special Assistants and sixteen Special Assistants. So for anybody to say that we are inducing hardship on the good people of Garkawa is to be blind to facts and realities on ground and above all, mischievous.

My desire as a Local government Chairman is to see the growth, advancement and progress of Mikang Local Government Area.
Long Live Mikang Local Government! Long Live Plateau State!! Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!!!.

………………………….
Hon. Ezekiel Vuelgap
Executive Chairman Mikang Local Government