Benue: Governor Alia And The Dark Political Clouds
By: Comrade John Peter
Benue state is undergoing an unprecedented leadership transformation under the stewardship of Gov. Hyacinth Alia, the cleric turned politician who emerged governor against all odds last year. Fr. Alia is crystallizing the pact he entered with the people of Benue through people centered policies that are already yielding results. However, the first major achievement of the clergy governor is the mainstreaming of trust. The people of the state appear to trust him completely and have shown that they are so far comfortable with his leadership.
However, Gov. Alia has found himself in the cross hairs of perverted politicians whose hold on the vicious politics that has held Benue state to ransom for so long, are gathering against the governor. Belgian writer, Erik Pevernagie once cautioned against many politicians who he said “are tantalizing storytellers, as they mix facts with fiction, grab our emotion and tell things, they want us to believe. Their factoids are unremittingly reiterated, take a life on their own and in the end become the very truth… until the bubble bursts. This typifies the tantalizing storytellers of Benue state under Senator George Akume who have now morphed into an army of bitter, desperate politicians whose original plan for Benue state was hinged on supporting a naïve cleric that they can push around. These folks have been relentless in their opposition of Governor Alia since he turned out to be much more than the doe-eyed pushover the expected him to be.
From what we have witnessed, these political gladiators of the old order are desperately deploying a narrative of falsehood against Governor Alia. They are rolling out conjectures and scaremongering in a cruel media campaign aimed at casting aspersions on, and pouring vitriol on every good thing Governor Alia has achieved so far. This turn of events started when the House of Assembly coup d’etat planned by the rampaging Camp of the Abuja bagman was ousted in that show of political resilience displayed by members of the Benue state legislature. Since then, these fair-weather politicians have made it their collective resolve to make the state ungovernable for the governor.
What I think they didn’t count on was the unflinching support that the people of Benue state have given their governor. The people have rebuffed the sustained campaign of calumny against the governor. Not even turning up every page in the dirty political literature of leadership demonisation has yielded any good, as it appears the harder, they push, the more committed the people are to Alia’s sermons of hope as delivered from his pulpit of action. The clergy governor has refused to be distracted by the cheap diatribe of his lost sheep. The man has demonstrated that no amount of blackmail can put him off of his trajectory of people centred policies.
There is a belief among people in Benue state that the gathering of hawks against the impact of the governor may not be unconnected to the fear that by succeeding where many of them have failed, Governor Alia may be unravelling their collective interventions of lies and monumental failure. This group of failed leaders include all democratically elected governors since the return of democracy in 1999. This will explain why Governor Alia’s greatest opposition is coming from within his ruling party, the All Progressive Congress in Benue state.
The fact above also confirms the truism that at the best of times, unscrupulous politicians have no party. They are united only through their rogue ideology which is driven by corruption, power mongering, division, and stagnation. The political landscape in Benue is so saturated by these kinds that the emergence of people like Alia who is deviating from the norm and causing disruptions that are delivering good governance for the first time in the democratic life of the state is threatening their relevance.
What has remained disturbing is the extent that Governor Alia’s traducers are willing go in trying to soil his good name and make the state ungovernable. The APCs so called party leaders loyal to the secretary to the government of the federation, Senator George Akume love spinning dangerous conjectures about the raison d’etat for the fall out between the governor and elements in the APC loyal to the SGF. The truth is, the SGF and his band of loyalists were simply outfoxed by Governor Alia.
Governor Alia, it was suspected got wind of the plot to control his government and limit it from working for the people of Benue state through the appointment of stooges in key agencies and arms of government like the state assembly to do the bidding of interests outside the state while frustrating his government’s policies and programmes. If anyone doubted this suspicion, happenings since that Benue state House of Assembly inauguration that didn’t favour the SGF’s anointed candidate would suggest the governor was indeed right to have withheld support for the candidate, allowing true democracy to take its cause.
In effect, what the political landscape in Benue is witnessing is a surgical procedure aimed at demystifying so called political godfathers who want to eat their cakes and continue to have it. Without over flogging the matter, the state governor is the rightful leader of the APC in the state, and this is regardless of what transpired before the election. But what we have witnessed in Benue, is an attempt to relegate the governor to the floorboards of his own party. Their stunned reactions now suggest they expected to get away with that plot too, believing that the Alia’s background as a clergy would make him malleable. Unfortunately, Governor Alia outmanoeuvred these political sharks, and it is this smart counterattack that has left a bitter taste in the mouth of Akume and his lackeys. Let’s face it, if Akume and his coroners had succeeded in planting their PATRIOTS in key positions, only God knows what would have become of Alia’s government right now.
One hopes the peace deal brokered by the Tiv traditional council does not wear the garb of the Fubara-Wike deal that appears to reduce the governor to the puppet of his predecessor. The Tiv traditional council must recognise Governor Alia’s unalienable place as the true leader of the APC in Benue state. Anything short of this eventuality will be an affront on the expectations of the Benue people whose hopes have been raised by the governor’s showing so far.
Peter, a development journalist writes from Abuja
