Plateau, Before We Vote Again in 2027: A Reflection on Performance, Politics, and the Office of the Citizen

By Oscar Fwangmun Danladi

As we approach another election cycle in Plateau State, I have been thinking deeply about the responsibility we carry as citizens, particularly in how we evaluate those entrusted with political power and those seeking to replace them. My concern is not primarily about Governor Caleb Mutfwang, whether for or against him. It is about us, the voters, and the categories through which we have learned to make political decisions.

There is something about our political culture that repeatedly troubles me. We often become so invested in the personalities, political parties, ethnic identities, and sentiments surrounding elections that we lose sight of what should be the central question: What has political power actually accomplished in improving the conditions of life for the people?

The political landscape in Plateau has undergone significant changes since the 2023 elections. Governor Mutfwang was elected on the platform of the PDP, subsequently left the party in December 2025, and joined the APC in January 2026. Meanwhile, the PDP has experienced internal divisions and competing political interests. These developments should invite us to reconsider how much weight we place on party affiliation when evaluating political leadership. If a candidate can move between political parties, then perhaps our political judgment must rest on something more enduring than the party label.

This is particularly important because electoral advantage and governmental performance are not necessarily the same thing. An incumbent may enjoy considerable political advantage because of the fragmentation of opposition forces, the resources of incumbency, or alignment with the federal government. None of these, however, automatically tells us whether the lives of ordinary citizens have improved.

And perhaps this is where we must begin to separate political calculations from the actual work of governance.

There are aspects of the current administration’s record that deserve recognition. Reported internally generated revenue increased from ₦15.9 billion in 2022 to ₦25.8 billion in 2023, ₦31.14 billion in 2024, and ₦45.1 billion in 2025. The administration has also reported clearing an ₦11 billion salary backlog and making monthly payments toward longstanding pension and gratuity arrears, some dating as far back as 1986. The increase in minimum pension from ₦5,188 to ₦20,000 is significant, particularly when considered against the realities of pensioners who have spent years waiting for what they had already earned.

There have also been reported improvements in healthcare, including the revitalization of 105 primary healthcare centres, the upgrading of Tudun Wada to a cottage hospital, approval for additional healthcare workers, and increased enrolment in the Plateau State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency. The completion of the Utonkon Bridge, originally awarded in 2007, and the rehabilitation of the Yelwa water plant in Bukuru after years of abandonment are examples of projects that can be examined beyond political announcements.

These developments matter. We should be able to acknowledge them without feeling that doing so amounts to political endorsement. Indeed, one of the unfortunate habits of our political culture is the assumption that recognizing what an administration has accomplished necessarily means supporting its continuation in office.

But the reverse is equally problematic. Criticism should not require us to deny whatever progress has been made. Yet recognition must not become an excuse to abandon interrogation. For instance, an increase in internally generated revenue is an important fiscal indicator, but it does not tell us enough about how effectively that revenue has been deployed. The more consequential question is whether the growth in government revenue has translated into better public services, stronger institutions, and improved conditions of life for the people.

Similarly, the announcement that healthcare facilities have been revitalized should invite further questions. Are these facilities operational? Are healthcare workers available? Are medicines accessible? Can the ordinary person in a rural community actually receive treatment when needed? A rehabilitated water plant is important, but the more immediate question for the household is whether water now flows through its taps, and how regularly.

There is a difference between announcing a project, completing a project, and having that project meaningfully improve people’s lives.

And perhaps our evaluation of governance must become increasingly attentive to these distinctions.

The question of security makes this reflection even more urgent. Plateau has endured decades of violence, displacement, destruction of livelihoods, and the painful loss of human lives. The governor’s fact-finding committee reportedly documented 11,749 deaths and attacks on 420 communities across 13 local government areas between 2001 and May 2025. These figures describe a long history that extends across several administrations and should not be attributed exclusively to the present government.

Nevertheless, the persistence of attacks demands serious questions about what has changed, what has not changed, and what measurable improvements have been made in protecting vulnerable communities.

Of course, security responsibilities in Nigeria are distributed unevenly between federal and state authorities. A governor does not exercise direct command over every security institution. But this does not eliminate the responsibilities of state leadership in coordination, early warning, emergency response, community protection, resettlement, support for victims, and the development of systems that make violence less likely to recur. We should be able to interrogate those responsibilities without pretending that the governor alone controls every dimension of the security architecture.

I am particularly interested in the need for publicly accessible, year-by-year and local-government-by-local-government security data. Without such information, how do we move beyond competing political narratives to evaluate whether conditions are improving? 

And this leads to another important concern: transparency. Reported assessments by BudgIT have raised questions about Plateau’s fiscal transparency and the accessibility of budget information. The state’s debt profile also deserves careful attention, particularly as the government announces increasingly ambitious budgets and capital projects.

A budget of ₦914.86 billion for 2026 may communicate an administration’s aspirations, but the proposed size of a budget is not the same thing as its execution. We need to know how much was actually released, how much was spent, which projects received funding, and what outcomes followed.

The same applies to education. Reports of reduced tuition, newly constructed classrooms, and renovated school facilities are worth examining. But educational development cannot be measured by buildings and tuition alone. What is happening to learning outcomes? Are students receiving better instruction? Are teachers adequately supported? Are schools becoming environments in which young people can genuinely flourish? Perhaps these questions should become part of our ordinary political conversations rather than questions we remember only during election campaigns.

As I think about the conversations likely to dominate Plateau’s next election, I can already recognize several positions, each carrying legitimate concerns but also important limitations.

Some will argue that the governor should be allowed to complete what he has started. There is something reasonable about the importance of continuity, especially for infrastructure and institutional reforms that cannot be completed within a single term. Yet continuity should not be assumed to guarantee completion. It should be evaluated against evidence of what has actually been accomplished, what remains unfinished, and whether the necessary resources and implementation capacity exist.

Others will appeal to identity, “Our Son” philosophy, political loyalty, or the advantages of alignment with the federal government. These are realities of political organization, and federal relationships can influence access to projects and resources. But we should be careful not to confuse political access with public benefit. The fact that someone belongs to our community or political party does not automatically establish that they have governed effectively.

There will also be those for whom security remains the overriding concern. This position is understandable, particularly for communities whose everyday existence has been shaped by violence and displacement. For someone unable to return to an ancestral home or cultivate farmland safely, discussions about roads and revenue may appear distant from the most immediate realities of life. Yet even here, our analysis must remain attentive to the responsibilities of different levels of government and the measurable actions within their authority.

Others will insist that the time has come for alternative leadership. Dissatisfaction with an incumbent is a legitimate basis for political scrutiny, but the desire for change should also invite careful examination of what those seeking office are proposing. What plans have they articulated? What institutional capacities do they bring? How do they intend to fund their priorities? What measurable commitments are they prepared to make?

And then there are those who have become so disillusioned with politics that they no longer see the point of participating. I understand how repeated disappointments can produce political exhaustion. Yet disengagement does not suspend the decisions that will shape our communities. Political institutions continue to exercise power whether or not citizens participate in choosing those who lead them.

Perhaps the larger problem is that we have allowed political conversations to become too narrowly organized around the question of who should occupy office, while paying insufficient attention to what the office itself should accomplish.

This is why I keep returning to what I have come to think of as the “Office of the Citizen”.

Unlike the office of governor, senator, or local government chairman, the Office of the Citizen is not limited by electoral tenure. It does not expire after four years. It is the continuing responsibility to question, evaluate, participate, and hold political authority accountable. And perhaps the greatest weakness in our democratic culture is that we become politically active when elections approach, only to withdraw from the work of citizenship once the votes have been counted.

We celebrate victory, mourn defeat, defend our preferred candidates, and attack their opponents. Yet the harder work begins after the election, when promises must become budgets, budgets must become projects, and projects must translate into improved conditions of life.

As Plateau approaches 2027, I hope our conversations will become more attentive to evidence and less captive to the familiar binaries of party loyalty, ethnic sentiment, political personalities, and electoral excitement. We should be able to ask what proportion of approved budgets was actually implemented, which healthcare facilities are functioning, how reliably water reaches households, what the security data reveals across local government areas, and how public debt affects the resources available for essential services. These questions should apply to every administration and every person seeking public office.

There is something deeply limiting about a political culture in which our standards of evaluation change depending on who occupies power. What we demand from one administration should not suddenly become irrelevant when someone we support assumes office.

Ultimately, the question is not simply whether Governor Mutfwang deserves another term or whether someone else should replace him. That decision belongs to the electorate, informed by the evidence, the available alternatives, and the aspirations citizens hold for their communities. The deeper question is whether we are developing the political maturity to distinguish between promises and performance, political advantage and public benefit, loyalty and accountability, and the possession of power and its responsible exercise.

Perhaps Plateau’s democratic future depends not only on the quality of those who seek political office, but also on the quality of citizenship we are willing to cultivate.

Because whoever wins in 2027, the work of the citizen must continue. And maybe that is where our most important political responsibility begins: recognizing that the Office of the Citizen is permanent, even when every other political office changes hands.

Fwangmun Oscar Danladi, is a doctoral researcher in religious studies at the University of Iowa.