| Samuel Bitrus Atukum | |
| Honorific Prefix: | Rear Admiral |
| Width: | 150px |
| Office1: | Governor of Plateau State |
| Term Start1: | January 1984 |
| Term End1: | August 1985 |
| Predecessor1: | Solomon Lar |
| Successor1: | Chris Alli |
| Birth Date: | 1940 |
| Birth Place: | Plateau |
| Rank: | Rear Admiral |
Samuel Bitrus Atukum (born 1940) was the military governor of Plateau State, Nigeria from January 1984 to August 1985 during the military regime of General Muhammadu Buhari.[1]
As governor, Navy Captain Atukum had to handle many challenges with a severely limited budget. He reintroduced community and cattle tax.[2] In July 1984, while launching a statewide tree-planting program, he noted that 70,000 hectares of valuable farmland had been lost to mining activities, and called for Federal assistance in conservation and reclamation of eroded land.[3] He sold off all Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot 505 official cars, replacing them with less pretentious Peugeot 504s, and also banned after-hours use of government cars.[4] In August 1985 he proposed that the unions should accept a 20% cut in the salary of state civil servants in view of the state's financial difficulties.[5]
Atukum said politics "has adversely affected the lives of the citizens instead of being an instrument for institutional development".[2] He expressed concern over use of the terms "non-indigenes" and "indigenes", which he felt would cause disharmony among people in the state.[6] In 1985 he declared that anybody who harboured illegal immigrants after the 10 May departure deadline would be treated as a saboteur.[7] In December 1984 he launched a program to vaccinate all children against killer diseases, urging parents to take advantage.[8] He merged Plateau Television (PTV) and Plateau Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) into the Plateau Radio Television Corporation.[9]
After retirement, Atukum was appointed the chief executive of the Nigerian Unity Line (NUL), a new state-owned company established after the liquidation of the Nigerian National Shipping Line in 1995.The company was privatised in 2001.[10] In February 2002 the company's only vessel, MV Abuja, was stuck in Sri Lanka needing repairs, while the shipyard was insisting on a down payment for the work and the crew's salaries were unpaid.[11] The ship was finally released in February 2003 after a bank guarantee of US$500,000 had been provided.[12] A few weeks later, NUL put the 10,000 deadweight container ship up for sale and plans to float the company on the stock market were dropped.[13]