Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State has explained that he stood on an armoured vehicle to address the crowd during his visit to Angwan Rukuba after 30 people were killed in an attack on Palm Sunday because he needed it as an elevated platform.

Mr Mutfwang, however, said his gesture was misrepresented by social media commentators.

“From the height I stood, part of the reason they put me in the ATC was for me to gain height in order to address the crowd,” Mr Mutfwang said in an interview with Channels TV on Friday.

He added, “As I addressed the crowd and they were comfortable that I had arrived, that’s why they were saying, ‘come, come,’ assuring me that I could come and that there was no harm.”

The governor berated social media commentators, saying, “If not for mischief, why are people not focusing on where I spent 90 per cent of the time with the crowd, seeing the corpses, appealing to people, calming people?”

He added, “You could see that social media can take a small portion and misrepresent it completely. I was comfortable with the people. I knew the people were not going to harm me, but the security had to.”

Last Monday, a horde of protesters grieving over the Palm Sunday attack that left many dead in Angwan Rukuba, Plateau State, shouted at Mr Mutfwang during his visit to the community, calling him a liar and asking him to come down from his armoured vehicle.

“Come down to address us. We will not listen to you,” some of the protesters chanted, while Mr Mutfwang begged them to listen to him.

“If you keep quiet, I will come to wherever you want me to come,” Mr Mutfwang entreated the crowd from the opening on the armoured vehicle that brought him to the community.

In another video, protesters confronted the governor, telling him he was lying and deceiving them with promises to secure lives and property.

“It is a lie. It is lie,” they chanted in Hausa, disrupting the governor’s speech.