ALIA: THE MOST CORRUPT & NEPOTISTIC GOV BENUE HAS EVER SEEN
By Aloysius Gbakaan
The man who is governing Benue State now known as Hyacinth Alia is a very corrupt, incompetent, heartless and nepotistic person. Little wonder that the church suspended this man more than once. His fake healing masses too failed to heal anyone because they were all arranged to deceive and dupe the poor unsuspecting people.
Alia is supposed to be a priest who should feel compassion for people and sympathize with those who are in pain, but he is the direct opposite. He promised to return the internally displaced people (IDP) to their ancestral homelands within his first 100 days in office but failed and has not bothered about them. He promised to clear the arrears of salaries and pensions in one fell swoop but has failed.
Those who knew Alia when he was a serving priest said his acts of corruption began way back then. Church funds at his disposal were never accounted for and he was also in the habit of diverting church property to his personal use. A ready example is when the then Auditor General of the Federation, Mr Samuel Ukura who with his family were also active members of St. Thomas Catholic Church, Anum which is opposite the BSU First Gate. Alia was the Parish Priest of the church. Ukura contributed significantly to the project. The man particularly donated trailer loads of bags of cement for the Church’s work. However, the cement was never used for the Church project. It was an open subject of discussion amongst Church members how Fr. Alia diverted the trailers of cement that were donated by the Auditor General. The building materials were not accounted for to the disappointment of the donor and his family who felt discouraged. This may partly be the reason for the long delay in completing the Church project until another priest took over. Meanwhile, Alia’s ‘White House’ in New GRA Makurdi was being constructed with the most expensive building materials.
This is the same man that became the Governor of Benue State in 2023! How can the resources of the state be safe in the hands of such a dubious man?
You will recall that a few months after he was sworn in, precisely on 30th November, 2023, APC Chairmen in the 23 local government areas of Benue State rose from a meeting with a communique in which they expressed worry and concern over the manner that governor Alia was/is running affairs of the state. The party chairmen consequently passed a vote of no confidence on the governor.
In a similar vein, the elders and zonal chairmen of Zones A, B and C parts of Benue State addressed a press conference where they also passed their verdict on the manner Governor Alia is running the state like a dictator. The party elders and party zonal chairmen enumerated the instances of the Governor’s dictatorship including his imposition of a leadership on the State House of Assembly, the selection of commissioners and the appointment of local government caretaker committees without receiving any input from the party.
Governor Alia has failed to live up to expectations of the people and instead of delivering on his campaign promises, he has launched unnecessary attacks against perceived critics, stakeholders, and his party members. The man whom Benue people voted into power has become a sole administrator with a towering disregard for democratic ethos and principles.
ACTS OF CORRUPTION
Governor Alia is neck deep in corruption! He gleefully swindles the state by signing contracts all by himself for companies that he has stakes in and inflates such contracts by triple digits. The projects he has claimed to be executing are all not covered in the budget of the state and no due process is being followed.
The Benue State House of Assembly did an investigation of the 23 local government areas and indicted Governor Alia and some of his key appointees. The House demanded that the Chairman, Benue State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) Grace Adagba should account for N2,073,779,218.07 (N2.07 billion) being balance of the funds received from the Bureau of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs between December, 2023 and June, 2024.
The House similarly demanded that the Special Adviser to the Governor on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs should refund the sum of N1,782,000,000.00 (N1.7 billion) being the total of the N9,000,000.00 (N9 million) siphoned from the monthly security votes of the local government councils in the state from October, 2023 to June, 2024 for 9 months and report back to the House within one month with evidence of the refund.
Governor Hyacinth Alia and his officials have since June 2023 being involved in acts of corruption which have been exposed by whistleblowers and civil society groups. The Governor was before the end of last year, accused of misappropriating about N66 billion of public funds in less than seven months in office. Out of the amount, N46 billion was said to be from the state government coffers while N20 billion was reported to have been embezzled from the monthly allocations of the 23 local governments of the state.
The level of financial malfeasance going on in the administration of Governor Alia, if not checked can crumble the economy of Benue State in the near future. Huge sums of money have accrued to Benue State in form of federal allocations, palliatives and other interventions from the Tinubu administration since Governor Alia assumed power in May last year. But his lack of respect for due process, transparency and accountability is again a blow on the state’s resources. Sadly, Governor Alia has not told anyone what has accrued to the state in the past six months and how he has expended the funds. He has remained silent on what the state wage bill is and has always dodged any inquiry into the state’s Internally Generated Revenue, IGR. Benue allocation has increased tremendously; but there is nothing to show for it.
In the middle of all these, the governor has been enmeshed in reckless spending and contract inflation. Even the prices of the refurbished buses which he claimed to buy at over 3.5 billion naira as part of the money given to Benue State following the removal of fuel subsidy as palliatives were clearly inflated. To give credence to that, he refused to tell the people how much each of the refurbished buses cost. Even the other items that were said to be given to the state by the Federal Government for distribution to the vulnerable to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal are suspected to have been diverted by his cronies. Governor Alia also approved a whooping three billion naira for the purchase of vehicles for himself and his cabinet members in an administration that rode to power with a promise to cut the cost of governance. The man spent a mind-blowing 40 billion naira on what we can boldly describe as frivolities without due process. The reckless mismanagement of funds meant for Local Governments is another worrisome characteristic of Governor Alia.
Without a cabinet in place, govenror Alia unilaterally approved contracts for the construction of 16 short streets totaling merely 15 kilometers within Makurdi town initially for the sum of N6 billion and later increased the cost to N9 billion. As we speak, no meaningful construction of the short streets is taking place anywhere in the state capital.
RECKLESSNESS IN GOVERNANCE
Governor Alia’s crass disrespect for the rule of law and democratic institutions was also on display when he illegally removed duly elected local government chairmen and councilors and replaced them with his cronies without input from the party on whose platform he came to power.
Governor Alia increased his approval limit from N50 million to a whopping N250 million.
Meanwhile, his government has continued to make heavy illegal deductions from the salaries of Benue workers.
Governor Alia has claimed that he is working without borrowing; but this is a fallacy. Despite the huge amounts of money coming to Benue now, Alia is busy borrowing more to throw the state into unending indebtedness.
SHOCKING NEPOTISM
It is a crying shame that Benue State has become the personal property of one man who allocates government positions to his family members and friends; a man whose calling as a priest is to preach unity, fairness and equity. Governor Hyacinth Alia has instead of uniting the state and making it an example as a man of God that he is expected to be, has elevated nepotism to a statecraft and made corruption an instrument to be glorified. It would interest you to know that Governor Alia since his assumption of office on May 29, 2023 has embarked on skewed appointments as majority of the key appointments have gone to his Kyan Constituency of Vandeikya Local Government Area where he hails from.
The glaring nepotism in the appointments has attracted widespread condemnations from all segments of the state who have seen the development as a slap on democracy; but that has not bothered the Governor.
The people of Zone C are the worst affected by Alia’s nepotism.
That clearly highlights how arrogant and fake the supposed man of God is.
*Gbakaan, a public affairs analyst writes from Utako, Abuja.
