“..And CALEB stilled the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it’..”
Numbers 13:30
There are moments in life when rhetoric must be hushed, when the drumbeat of panic should be put out to pasture, and when the timid, however loud they were yesterday, must make room for resolve.
Plateau is at such a moment.
Like Caleb in scriptures, Governor Mutfwang now stands at a threshold where courage, calculation, and conviction converge.
To say its merely a “move” is to misunderstand its gravity: this is not a tremor to be exaggerated by pundits of panic; it is the measured clearing of the throat before a long, necessary sentence is spoken.
Great political philosophers have opined that politics, at its best, is the disciplined application of means to ends, a craft of leverage, compromise, and strategic placement.
When a governor who has weathered an unrelenting storm chooses to reposition himself at the centre, he does so not to pursue vanity but to secure capacity: access to resources, lines of influence and the institutional oxygen that accelerates development, not to himself, but to the common good, and to reduce such a decision to mere ambition or betrayal is either ignorance or bad faith.
Which brings us to the Plateau State APC and their demented national helmsman, Nentawe.
There is something almost operatic about their present posture: a loud chorus of alarms, a flurry of moralizing press releases, and the anxious pretence of being the sole custodians of providence, and if only political foresight were measured by decibel level, they would perhaps be prophets indeed, but foresight is not made by volume; it is made by vision; an ability to map interest to outcome, to forecast trade offs, and to choose the tools that deliver public goods, and on that score their performance is, at best, amateur night.
Their reflex is predictable: when a self protective clique loses the narrative, it blames the actor rather than interrogating the argument.
Hypocritically, they celebrate similar realignments elsewhere when they suit them but tremble at the name “CALEB” and clutch at procedural straws when the same calculus threatens their local comfort.
That inconsistency reveals the real failing, not some abstract loyalty to principle, but an incapacity to think strategically beyond parochial advantage.
There is an old political aphorism:
those who cannot imagine power used for something other than their preservation are poor stewards of power, and the Plateau’s naysayers have repeatedly offered proof.
We must learn also to be instructive, not merely derisive; a move to the centre is not an erasure of identity; it is a pragmatic translation of local priorities into national leverage.
It says: “We will not surrender our history for expediency, but we will avail ourselves of the instruments that make governance deliverable.”
If the objective is roads, healthcare, security and real economic opportunity, then the relevant moral question is not which party sign hangs in the background of a ribbon cutting, but which ballotline increases the odds that the project gets funded and sustained.
To the purveyors of bitterness we offer a reminder drawn from scripture and commonsense: every promised land has giants, and the presence of giants is not an instruction to cower; it is an invitation to strategy, and Caleb’s confidence, “we are well able to overcome it” was not bravado but assessment.
He knew the terrain, measured his people’s capacity, and chose action over the paralysing comforts of cynicism.
In public life, the privilege of leadership is to act on behalf of that assessment, not to hide behind the convenient falsehood that obstruction equals principle.
So, let this also serve as a lesson in political literacy for the wider public: partisan purity is not a substitute for policy, because the fetish for ideological consistency that elevates posture over progress will always be the friend of stagnation.
Real politik, which is merely the sober practice of aligning means to ends, should be taught, discussed and judged on outcomes, and if a strategic realignment improves governance and secures Plateau’s developmental interests, history will remember the results, not the righteous sputterings of those who mistook cho cho cho for influence.
To our darling Governor:
let the critics clatter; destiny is rarely negotiated with those whose principal skill is complaint, and if this move is undertaken with a clear articulation of policy goals, transparent expectations for accountability, and an insistence that Plateau’s people reap the dividends, then it will be the sober, necessary act of a statesman, not a capitulation, and to the naysayers and the national chairman who mistake theatrics for stewardship: sharpen your arguments, expand your imagination, or resign yourselves to being a footnote in a story you no longer help to write.
In the end, history does not reward the loudest voice in the room; it rewards the one who, like CALEB, stilled the crowd, weighed the odds and stepped forward.
Plateau’s future should not be bartered on the altar of petty anxieties, and if courage accompanied by prudence guides this course, then the promised land for which we hope will not be won by clamor, but by the quiet competence of those who know how to transform opportunity into public good.
The God of CALEB shall REMAIN our God!
Signed: MARK SILAS BULUS FOR
PLATEAU PROGRESSIVES