By Olukorede Yishau
Of recent, videos of Gembu and other settlements on the Mambilla Plateau have surfaced on the net. The videos, to many people, show the beauty of the Plateau; to me, it shows a wasted opportunity, one of the opportunities to have our own Paris that we can ask tourists to see and die after.
Mambilla Plateau is another place you will visit and wonder if leaders in Nigeria are born wicked or made wicked by circumstances they have allowed to dictate their legacies.
The last and only time I was in Gembu, glooming buildings, unvarnished walls, broken fences and hectares upon hectares of wasting land confronted me. I have kept a tab over the years, and Gembu and the rest of the Mambilla Plateau still sit pretty in the committee of the unfortunate. This is a land that should be swimming in dollars from all over the world, it should be a place where the high and the mighty all over the world die to visit, and many should be willing to see Mambilla Plateau and die!
The people speak Kaka, Panso, Fulfude, Kambo and Mambilla. From what I saw, Gembu, which borders Cameroun, has the capacity to spring surprises— if only the right investment is made.
Its weather is akin to what you have in Europe. The ‘hottest’ it ever gets is 20-degree centigrade. Here people wear winter jackets all the time and their heads are covered with head warmers. Gloves are not uncommon to keep the cold away. Apples, tea, and any kind of fruits, including those believed to be exclusive to European soils, grow on its fertile soils. They hardly experience sunshine. Fridges are not necessities. Drinks chill anywhere you put them. All thanks to their land being 1,840 metres above sea level— the highest point in Nigeria.
It is no less than six hours by road from Jalingo, the Taraba State capital. It was no fun until I was reminded that it used to take three days. The terrain is difficult; and for the road to be constructed, engineering wizardry had to be applied.
If not for a 1963 referendum, it would have been in Cameroun. The people chose Nigeria after the then Premier of the Northern Region, Ahmadu Bello (the Sardauna of Sokoto), convinced them to stick with Nigeria. Their local government is known as Sardauna in honour of the man who made them see the goodness in Nigeria. But have they much to show for it?
Timothy Kataps was the council chairman when I visited. He lamented the neglect of the area. In 1991, when Ibrahim Babangida was military president, the people were enraged and one day chased away Nigerian policemen, and declared the area a United Nations territory. They hoisted a UN flag. This, said Phillip Duwe, a government official, made Babangida gift them the road which turned the journey from Jalingo to six hours instead of three days.
During my trip, I found out that the Mambilla Plateau had been partitioned by influential Nigerians, especially those who were in the military. I was told acres of land were acquired by these goons in anticipation of the Plateau taking its pride of place. Unhappy Kataps threatened to revoke their rights to the land if they were not developed. They remain undeveloped years after.
A hydro-electric project initiated by the military remains unrealised some two decades later. Mrs. Yorte Sorandi was 18 years in 1980 when the project was conceived.
“I was only 18 years then. With my small body, I was not married yet. I watched as my father assisted the white men who put the instrument. They said they were going to construct for us a hydropower dam.
“Today, I am 58, and no block has been laid, no iron has been cast. When will they start the project?” she asked The Nation’s Fanen Ihyongo last year.
Dahiru Abdulkadric, whose father was employed to be looking after an instrument on the site, sees it as a dream.
He said: “This Mambilla dam project has been to me like a dream. My father used to talk about it. Now he has gone and I am doing his job.
“They told us they are coming to compensate and move us to new places. We have waited and become tired. But we are ready if the government is sincere and serious about the project.”
When President Muhammadu Buhari was in the state capital for his campaign rally on January 28, 2015, he said the previous governments were only doing politics with the Mambilla hydropower project.
He said: “If I become president, I will revive and complete the Mambilla hydropower dam, which has been moribund,” he said.
On August 30, 2017, Buhari awarded the contract for the engineering work on the Mambilla dam, through a joint venture with a Chinese civil engineering company for $5.792 billion (N2 trillion), to be partly funded by China Export-Import (EXIM) Bank as a concessionary loan. However, EXIM, after its survey, reduced it to $3 billion.
Indigenes believe Buhari cannot finish the project before 2023. Will the next government finish it? Not surprisingly, the people I met felt more affinity with Cameroun, where many had relatives. They crossed the border easily. Cameroonian music, television stations, and radio stations are popular with them.
Photographers and cinematographers will jump for joy at the ending rolling green hills of the Plateau.
The road to the Plateau is not one where you speed; it is so curvy a speeding car can end up in the many deep gorges around it. Rocks, mountains and highlands had to be drilled or quarried before Babangida could gift them the road that shortened the distance from Jalingo to six hours instead of the three days.
My final take: Like Mambilla Plateau and its neglected gifts of nature, Nigeria seems to be a grave of potential money-spinners. We have forest reserves, waterfalls, dams and other scenic beauties all over the country, but we carry on as though we are bereft of how to make them cough out money like they do overseas. We run abroad for everything that we have but have failed to make the best of.
Always, I am left wondering: who do us something?
•YISHAU is a columnist and author of IN THE NAME OF OUR FATHER and VAULTS OF SECRETS