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Senator George Akume
By Ben Atonko
The countdown to the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s primary election has stirred up acrimony among the broom party’s stakeholders. An aspirant who is said to be so anxious to grab the party’s ticket is making acerbic comments, threatening fire should he not get the party’s flag.
He is an old politician. He has already described the efforts of party elders to simplify the process of picking a candidate as horse-trading. He rather wants the party to take the torturous and costly course of doing primary election to get a candidate when the time is so short. It is sinuous because as many as 32 persons are aspiring to be governor of Benue State on the APC platform and by the party’s timetable, between 7 and 9 May, 2022, the candidate for the party should be produced. If each of the 32 buys the party’s nomination forms at N50million, as much as N1.6billion will have been squandered.
The party people are troubled by this. They are also cautious. They consider what such money can do for those aspirants and indeed, the state they seek to govern. They give wise counsel saying the aspirants should talk to themselves so their number is reduced.
Already, the elders have taken the vital signs and can feel the political pulse of the Benue State people. They have read the political thermometer and can decipher what the temperature is. The weathercock has already shown the direction of the wind so they besought the aspirants to think twice.
But they would not. Some of them have gone ahead to pick the pricey nomination forms. The brash and foolhardy one among them has described the elders’ efforts as indulgence in “concentric circles of conspiracy”. By this, the elders have been rebuffed. Even the leadership retreat convened by the elders for the purpose of driving consensus among the aspirants washed out. The aspirants are left to their whims to take their own courses.
The stories of governorship race in Benue State are quite intriguing. One of the most gripping stories is the election of a Catholic priest as governor. It was indeed a spectacle to behold when on January 2, 1992, a Catholic priest, Rev Fr Moses Orshio Adasu was sworn in as governor of Benue State having won election under the platform of Social Democratic Party (SDP). For the records, he was and still is the only Catholic priest so elected in Nigeria. Benue State was in a despondent state that time because the military government was exploitative, repressive and dehumanizing. It is a measure of his sagacious management of human and material resources that his tenure though very short is today compared to that of the first civilian governor of the state in terms of performance, the late Aper Aku..
Fr Adasu founded the first state university in northern Nigeria. He reactivated and upgraded the College of Education, Oju. He conceived the Tarka Foundation and named it after the state’s political icon, the late Sen Joseph Sarwuan Tarka.
The cleric started BENCO roof tiles and the Katsina/Ala Fruit Juice Company. Of course, his mission was to sanitize the Benue State political space and engineer socio-economic development. Fr Adasu was removed from office by the Gen Sani Abacha military regime in November 1993.
Sadly, the bad times have not ceased to visit Benue State. Even under the democratic system, the state still bleeds profusely. No doubt, the state is today in a deplorable condition: irregular payment of salaries and pensions and gross deficit in infrastructural development. Industries that once flourished are no more. The state’s shares in the only blue-chip that the people used to boast of was sold by a sitting governor and the proceeds appropriated to the governor’s own use. There could be nothing as painful as lack of good leadership in the Benue State Government House.
In the midst of the despondency, effort was made to bring in a tenured college professor in the East Bay, Prof Steve Torkuma Ugbah to eradicate the ills against Benue State. Ugbah, a professor of Marketing at California State University with dual-citizenship, entered the race for governor under the relatively new and unknown Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). He lost the race despite having 76 percent of the ballot. Prof Ugbah’s story is interesting today because his was to be a rescue mission. He was brought on board by Benue State elders, led by Sen George Akume. Immediately his name popped up, the forces holding Benue State down were very uncomfortable. They tried all they could to stop him, claiming they had laboured to build their political base so “an alien” would not come and pluck fruits from a field he did not nurture.
Unfortunately, Prof Ugbah had never been with the Benue State people and he was no party man. He lived much if his adult life in the Diaspora so he was a stranger to many. The demagogues preyed upon people’s prejudices and denied the professor what was his.
Now, history repeats itself by the coming of Rev Fr Hyacinth Iormem Alia for the governor’s seat next year. Fr Alia, like Fr Adasu is a priest. Like Fr Adasu and Prof Ugbah, his coming has been tagged a rescue mission. And like Prof Ugbah, he was not known to partisan politics. In fact, he does not have political honchos who will stand for him.
Yet his coming has given hope to the afflicted and the atmosphere is charged with chants like “Give us Alia, Benue is Alialised” etc. He is very popular with the entire Benue State people, the youth, workers and the peasants.Many have described Fr Alia as a good man, a man with a very cool mien, a man that does not put up with nonsense. He is very meticulous, open minded and generous. His heart is with the less privileged. Apparently, Fr Alia will never superintend the fretting away, pilfering and large-scale thievery of public resources. Unlike Prof Ugbah, Fr Alia has been with the people, working for them at the grassroots, healing the sick and nurturing their spiritual life. Many people spreading the Fr Alia message have benefited from his benevolence. And of course, others are supporting him because they yearn for change from the rule of the ordinary politician to a philosopher king. Any attempt to block his way to Government House, Makurdi will have repercussions.
Like the coming of Prof Ugbah in 2011, Fr Alia’s coming is a tsunami. It has swept through Benue State, sending a chill up politicians’ spine. The social media is humming and sputtering. Gatherings within and without Benue State, day and night are yearning for an APC ticket for Fr Alia.
The people are damn restive. They are prevailing on the “grandmaster” to give them Fr Alia unfailingly. According to them, Fr Alia will place great value on the life and wellbeing of a Benue State person: a teacher, pensioner, student, market woman, farmer etc.
The stories of the characters in this essay present to us a good lesson as we trudge up the hill of the Benue State Government House.
The days are drawing nigh so the Benue State people are anxiously waiting, beseeching the leader of APC in Benue State, Sen Akume and elders of the party to hearken to the voice of the people — vox populi, vox dei!
The gubernatorial election in Benue State takes place on 11 March 2023. This is concurrent with other gubernatorial elections and elections to the state houses of assembly.
