Benue: PDP Tackles Alia Over Independence Message

The Benue State chapter of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) has accused Governor Hyacinth Alia of reciting poetry in his independence speech while the state bleeds.

 A statement signed by the state Publicity Secretary, Bemgba Iortyom on Monday in Makurdi said, the speech was empty in substance.

According to Iortyom, "Alia skirted and surfed on major issues such as agricultural transformation, industrialization, education and security in the manner of a holidaymaker surfing on ocean waves for fun.

"He talked glibly about having boosted agricultural production in the state with a fictional 100 trucks of fertiliser and other unspecified reforms, whereas in reality, his imaginary fertiliser isn't anywhere to be seen in the state where Fulani herdsmen and their cattle are going about in the rural communities eating up whatever little crops the impoverished peasants braved the odds at the risk of their lives to plant in the lands they have been displaced from.

"In the words of Governor Alia, a mere promise to pay the fees for the registration of students in the West African Examination Council (WAEC) is an education revolution and a boosting of literacy levels in the state, when it is even yet to be known how many students are to benefit from this so-called 'revolution' and what chance this promise stands of making it to reality out of the multitude of promises still in the cooler in his bed chamber.

Iortyom further stated that It is the observation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Benue State that Governor Alia is addicted to flowery speeches and obviously does consider the content of his poetic rendition alone as substantial enough for the people to live on.

While the party understands that this is evidently a reflection of the governor's core orientation as a priest whose main duty to his congregation consists in exhorting them to faith as "the evidence of things not seen but which must be believed", PDP charges him to embrace the reality that Benue a real society which congregation lives not by faith alone, but by the evidence of things which should be seen to be believed.

"In the real Benue, the people are dying by the day from the bullets and machetes of Fulani herdsmen and bandits, the same bandits whom the governor has confessed to having a pact with and refers to as his "brothers in the bush".

"PDP puts it loudly to the Benue State Governor that while the speeches crafted by his speech writers may sound melodious and suit his love for glib talking, the bandits he calls his "brothers in the bush" and the herdsmen whose atrocities he prefers to cast a blanket of silence over are gaining the upper hand and bleeding the people to a slow and painful death.

"A governor who takes seriously the oath he swore to protect the lives and properties of the people under his watch will take the abduction of a member of his Executive Cabinet by bandits as an affront to the sacred authority of state power he holds sufficient to bring out righteous anger in him to be felt even in his words alone.

"PDP puts it to Governor Hyacinth Alia that by his current demeanour, he is reciting flowery poetry in a killing field where criminals are daily cutting down and maiming the innocent people he is under oath to defend but who, as things stand, are as helpless as he is indifferent."