As Jang Gifts Plateau A Shiloh

By Andrew Agbese

Open the Bible with me to the first book of Samuel chapter 1, let’s read from verse 1-3:

“There was a certain man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite, from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.

2 He had two wives; one was called Hannah and the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.

3 Year after year this man went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh, where Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli, were priests of the Lord.”

And the question is, Why was it important for Elkanah, who could have easily prayed with his family at home, to leave his town and travel all the distance with his family to Shiloh?

Shiloh, first mentioned in Genesis 49:10 was a word linked to the coming of the Messiah. It was later identified as the name of a place in Samaria, where people gather to worship and sacrifice to the Lord, long before Solomon built the temple as a central place of worship.

But perhaps the significance of Shiloh would have been lost if not for the role it played in the life of one of the wives of Elkanah, Hannah, who was barren.

She used the opportunity of the yearly visits to Shiloh with her husband and co-wife and children, to pray to God about her barrenness and God opened her womb.

Due to this experience which gave the world Samuel, Shiloh became more than a people’s assembly, it became a by-word for turn around miracles.

In the year 2021, when the vogue is to act in defiance to spiritual matters, a voice has come from an unlikely quarter, a political leader, trying to assert the place of prayer on his people.

Former governor of Plateau State, Da Jonah Jang, on Friday, presented to the people, a place known as ‘The 10 Commandments Prayer Altar.’

Located on a vast land in Doi, south of Jos, the place is marked by two giant slabs resembling the two tablets Moses was given containing the ten commandments on Mount Sinai.

Moses was the one that led the people of Israel out of Egypt, but it was not a walk in the park as he had to surmount both internal and external challenges to do so.

Jang is no Moses, but fate has placed him in similar circumstances.

As a leader, he had been through virulent turbulences.

It was during his tenure as governor that disagreements over local government elections opened the door to a plethora of crises that led to loss of lives and property.

But Jang had been firm and did not allow the crises affect his pledge to work for the state; he did work; such that by the time his two terms came to a close, he had rebuilt Plateau into a state with all the trappings of a modern state, close to a Promised Land.

As a leader, he gave the people a sense of pride when they needed it most. He did not deny them their share of infrastructural development and many wondered how he was able to achieve that.

Perhaps it was his reliance on the divine all along that saw him through, for he is a man who strongly believes in the efficacy of prayer and never takes spiritual matters lightly.

I was at the Rwang Pam Stadium in 2005 when the PDP governorship primary held. On that cold night, the first thing Jang did on getting to the stadium was to go on his knees.

There was thick conspiracy to deny him the ticket at all cost though he was the most acceptable of the candidates, but his prayers prevailed and he was given the ticket.

On assuming power, he made prayer a cardinal point in his administration and went for any totem that represents a dark side.

For openers, he destroyed what he saw as a celebration of poverty which was placed at the center of Jos by a previous administration.

To him, a statue that had a woman carrying loads on her head while carrying a baby, was a negative projection of the Plateau woman as perpetually bound in poverty and reasoned that it only serves to emphasizes the notion that people cannot break from such bonds.

By the time the bulldozer rolled over the larger than life artwork, it was evident that that not many missed it.

But whether it served the purpose bor not, Plateau under Jang, began to breathe a fresh air of prosperity.

Under Jang, the state saw infrastructural development as his administration re-spelt Plateau in glowing terms giving the state which had become synonymous with poverty, landmark projects which included a bridge that stood at a zenith higher than others and the semi urban landscape in Jos began to change with flyovers racing half way through the horizon with state of the art edifices adorning its skyline.

For the first time also, the people who were used to tuke-tuke and rickety busses and motorcycles as means of transport, began to ride in brand new cars as taxis and to own same. Life became enjoyable.

His empowerment programmes also saw to the trainings in entrepreneurship with many small scale businesses springing up. The Plateau man who was projected as averse to commerce and a slave to alcohol came out clean as a sober and serious minded person owning businesses!

When the former governor clocked 70, he obeyed a cardinal spiritual injunction by forgiving all those who had wronged him. He withdrew all the cases he had in court including even ones that would have earned him good money in terms of damages done to his reputation.

And now he has built a place of prayer and worship. A 5000 capacity hall that has become the talk of town.

This enunciates one fact, that even after leaving public office, that Jang is not done with building Plateau.

His decision to build a place of prayer, where people can cry their hearts out to God and not be distracted or misunderstood, is the mother of all gifts and its significance cannot be overemphasized.

That the place would be open for events such as weddings and other meets is also a positive development as it would remind whoever comes there to acknowledge the presence of God in their lives.

Another pep for spiritual uplift has come to Jos and from what I hear, the people are saying a big ‘amen.’