4th July, 2023
Benue State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sees Governor Hyacinth Alia’s persistent media attacks against his predecessor, Samuel Ortom as a ploy to cover the nakedness of his glaring incompetence and unpreparedness for the high office he is occupying.
As the oldest man at 57 to have become governor of the state and with the thorough training Catholic priests are known to have, the governor was expected to hit the ground running, yet after over a month in office, he has only an embarrassing gimmick in the name of salary payment made to a little fraction of the state’s workforce to show, ranking him with the worst take-off ever witnessed in the history of the state.
At the same time it can be observed that he is vainly trying to stage a media trial of Ex-Governor Ortom and the PDP both of whom he accuses of having left the state in a deplorable state, with the salaries and pensions arrears his main talking point.
But nowhere is it the standard that an administration may be judged on a single factor and condemned as having done nothing, the way Governor Alia is seeking to push the narrative that because the Ortom administration left salary and pensions arrears, it should be traduced as having done nothing.
When the governor says the immediate past administration and PDP did nothing while in power, he raises the question: has he gone through the handover notes given to him and ascertained that the many kilometers of grade A asphalt roads, which himself daily drives on, and the very comfortable office facilities he works in which are captured in the notes as achievements of that same administration do not exist?
By what criteria of performance assessment does Governor Alia seek to dismiss as nothing the local security architecture, quantum leaps in schools, hospitals and clinics renovation and funding, rural electrification, portable water provision, agricultural practices reorientation, commercial standards reformation, housing, stimulation of private sector investments in industrial production, and many more, all of which are recorded as achieved by the Ortom administration in the handover notes at his disposal?
Having made payment of salaries the main plank of his attack against Ex-Governor Ortom, yet himself so far unable to pay even a month’s wages to workers after over a month in office, PDP observes that the governor is running from the serious business of governance, and instead indulging in frivolities and the pursuit of vendetta against those associated with the administration of his predecessor.
From his kangaroo committees for public assets recovery made up of persons who themselves are still in possession of and enjoying use of public assets, to the acts of impunity and contempt for a subsisting court order against sacking local government councils in the state, Governor Alia is fast sliding down the abyss of infamy.
Only yesterday, obviously on the request of the governor, the Department of State Service (DSS) invited and are still detaining some local government Chairmen in the state among whom are women, and on same day he allegedly personally led security men to forcefully evict from a government residence the erstwhile Chief Detail attached to Ex-Governor Ortom, who is billed to have vacated the residence in a few days, during which the governor supervised as the doors to the residence were broken down and the personal belongings of the DSS officer thrown out in the open.
PDP urges Governor Alia to subdue the growing appetite in him for pettiness and vengefulness and face up to the serious business of redeeming the promises he made to the people during the campaigns which include restoration of security to the state and the return of IDPs to their homes as well as clearing of salaries and pensions arrears to workers and retirees in the first 100 days of his government.
Our great party offers the governor free lessons in history that PDP holds bragging rights to more than 90% of the developmental milestones recorded in the state since 1999, and that within this same period he has been in office so far, all of his predecessors on the party’s platform had recorded achievements which at the rate he is going it will take him an eternity to measure up to.
Bemgba Iortyom,
State Publicity Secretary,
PDP, Benue State.
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