By Joseph Unongo
The article by Leonard Karshima Shilgba, with the aforementioned title, depicted Benue’s stark reality. But the writer Shilgba’s cautious rhetoric without calling a spade, spade detracts largely from its essence.
Akume was railroaded by Gemade as Governor. His first act of betrayal was to deny the Ministerial slot that was unmistakenly Gemade’s.
He followed through to dislodge Gemade as national PDP chairman for Audu Ogbe. Akume consistently bit the finger that fed him without looking back, all in an effort to maintain his absolute hold onto his executive powers as the governor of the state. Why does he think Karma will not catch up with him.
Akume laid the foundation of the personalization of power in Benue State against building strong, productive institutions with effective governance models. He weaponised poverty against the people for political control by destroying every wealth creation initiative of the Gov Aku administration. He killed the erstwhile viable local govts, by the take over of local government funds, thereby derailing the rural economies.
He has ensured the continuity of his governance philosophy through his selection of Governors and the bid to firmly control them when he refused to be controlled!
When you have the same response from three different governors, Suswam, Ortom, and now Alia, it only points clearly to one consistent problem: The fish starts to rot from the head!!!
Gov Alia on the other hand, while being appreciated by his payment of civil/public servants and pensioners, and qualitative roads infrastructure development, seems to have been tactless by fighting too many wars in all fronts and forgetting the real mandate expected of him: To reverse every inch of the Akume’s self-centered governance philosophy to a wealth creation, people centered governance across the social strata of the state as enshrined by Gov Aku.
Gov Alia needs to revamp the Agro processing centers and back the private sector to establish new centers across the senatorial districts to spark a viable Agro chain for wealth creation across board. He urgently needs to truly grant local govt autonomy to revamp the rural economies. Both strategies would combine to enhance his goodwill.
This will result in liberating the people and State from the strangle hold of Akume and completely erode his political base. He doesn’t need to engage in any power tussle with his benefactor, to incur the blackmail he has submitted himself to.
Akume should transform into the North Central Geopolitical zonal leader that awaits his bidding, rather than his preference to remain a local Benue leader that he ought to have outgrown, like his co-governorship colleague, now President Tinubu.
BENUE STATE IS NOT & SHOULD NEVER BE ABOUT ANY INDIVIDUAL.
