From Ismail Omipidan, Abuja

Historically speaking, from 1999 to date, the Idoma people of Benue State have remained the deciding factor during contentious governorship elections. And each time they play the role, Daily Sun gathered, they are always promised power in return. But once it is time to actualise the promise, there is usually no political will to pull it through.

Daily Sun investigation, however, revealed that unlike previously, there were no such promises made in 2023 to secure the zone’s support for the election of the incumbent governor, Rev. Father Hyacinth Alia. Reports and available data, however, show that but for the support of the zone, APC would have lost the state in 2023.

Benue State is politically divided into three senatorial districts. There are zones A, B and C, with the Tiv-speaking people of the state, which is the single largest ethnic group, dominating both zones A and B respectively. Zone C is dominated by the Idoma-speaking people of the state. The Tiv have 14 councils, while the Idoma have nine.

Forty-nine years after the creation of the state, no Idoma has been governor or speaker of the state House of Assembly. It was, however, lucky to produce a Chief Judge about eight years ago. But before then, zone C never came near the position.

Traditionally, once the Tiv take the governorship seat and the speaker, the Idoma take the deputy, SSG and deputy speaker. But all that changed during the second term of the former governor, Samuel Ortom, when he brought in a Tiv person to displace an Idoma person from the position of Secretary to the State Government (SSG), a trend the incumbent has continued with.

Ortom had, in the build-up to the 2015 governorship election, contested for the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and lost. He was offered the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket less than 24 hours after losing the PDP’s ticket by Senator George Akume, former governor of the state and incumbent Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF).

However, before the end of his first tenure, he fell out with Senator Akume. Sensing that he was likely to be denied the ticket on the platform of the APC, Ortom returned to the PDP, where he secured his second term.

In the build-up to the 2023 General Elections, he, alongside four others of his colleagues, fell out with the leadership of the PDP at the national level. He canvassed support for the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, in Benue State. Feelers, however, indicate that his support for Obi made Benue voters turn their backs on Obi, with the Idoma providing the needed votes to give APC victory. Ortom was hated for not paying workers’ salaries.

Sources, however, told Daily Sun that no Idoma has been compensated with any federal appointment since the coming into being of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration.

Like what happened during Ortom’s first tenure, Governor Alia and Akume are currently at daggers drawn. Although, unlike Ortom, Governor Alia is paying workers’ salaries regularly, in addition to paying the backlog of salary arrears he inherited from Ortom, the spate of killings in the state in recent times appears to be affecting his governance rating negatively. And with the cold arm from Akume, Governor Alia may have to turn to the Idoma people once again in 2027 to deliver him. But certainly not on the platform of the APC, sources told Daily Sun.

It was further learnt that because of Ortom, Governor Alia may be unwilling to defect to the PDP.

Daily Sun’s investigations revealed that unless President Tinubu personally intervenes, Akume would deny Alia the APC ticket. And once that happens, sources say, APC would lose the state. Already, it was further learnt, one of Akume’s proteges, who is currently at Shipper’s Council has been tipped to replace Alia.

The Idoma and their aborted governorship dreams

Before the 2003 elections, the Idoma people had concluded that they would produce the next governor by truncating then Akume’s second term bid. But former Senate President, Senator David Mark felt otherwise. Instead, he said that the time was not ripe, adding that the Idoma people should support Akume for a second term, so that Akume too would support the Idoma’s bid in 2007.

But some Idoma sons and daughters felt betrayed by Mark’s position. They wasted no time in moving en masse from the PDP to the defunct United Nigeria Peoples Party (UNPP). Retired Generals Geoffrey Ejiga, Lawrence Onoja and a host of other notable Idoma politicians, including Alhaji Usman Abubakar, known in the local parlance as “Young Alhaji,” were among those who parted ways with Mark.

UNPP went into governorship primary; Onoja, an Idoma, and Mike Nku, a Tiv, were among those who contested for the party’s governorship ticket. At the election, two Idoma-speaking councils failed to cast their votes for Onoja. But even at that, Onoja gave Nku a good run for his money, as he got most of his votes from the Tiv delegates. The feat made it impossible for a clear winner to emerge. They were to go for a runoff election. But as they were preparing for the runoff, the “Judas” among the Idoma people also began scheming. In the end, one of the retired generals went into negotiations with Nku so that one of his younger brothers could be Nku’s running mate. The runoff was abandoned; Nku became the party’s flag bearer at the expense of Onoja. Ironically, the same group of persons who had moved out of the PDP en masse on the premise that it was their turn to produce the governor, suddenly realised that the “time was not ripe” for an Idoma governor.

Akume, sources say, went into a gentleman’s agreement with the PDP leaders in zone C, with a promise to hand over to an Idoma man, should they support his return bid. Mark was said to have led the Idoma team to the said meeting and negotiations. At the end of the election, Akume was returned as agreed. But when the 2007 election was approaching, with the Idoma people looking forward to seeing how the gentleman’s agreement would be implemented, Mark and Akume fell out, thereby making it difficult to implement the said agreement.

Daily Sun recalls that if the contentious third term agenda had sailed through, producing an Idoma governor would have been a fait accompli, as Mark would have been in charge of the party machinery in the state. He would have been the one calling the shots and one of his kinsmen would have emerged the party’s standard bearer in the state. He was the only senator from Benue State that supported the third term. And he told anyone who cared to listen that he had no apologies for the position he took, even as he insisted that he took the position in the collective interest of the Idoma nation, in order to protect its political future.

Interestingly, he was the last to speak on the floor of the senate in support of the third term on the day it was thrown out. In fact, while making his own contributions, Mark had pleaded with the senate president to give those senators who had earlier spoken but who had no “courage” to declare their stand, another opportunity to speak so that they could take a stand. The rest, as they say, is now history.

But even after the demise of the third term agenda, the Idoma, especially those in the PDP, did not relent in their bid to ensure that they produce the governor in 2007. Although Mark was said to have made spirited attempts to enforce the gentleman’s agreement the group had reached with Akume, the zone C governorship aspirants that year made it impossible for Mark to make any meaningful impact in that regard. Despite the fact that he made efforts to ensure that Akume respected the understanding by insisting that only the governorship aspirants of the Idoma extraction should participate in the PDP primary, he could not pull it through.

He was said to have asked the Idoma governorship aspirants at the time to return to Otukpo to conduct their own primary, so that the name of whoever emerges from Otukpo would be forwarded to Abuja. And since he had the backing and support of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Daily Sun gathered that if they had listened to him, an Idoma governorship candidate would have emerged on the ticket of the PDP in the state.

But the aspirants turned down the proposal. At the primary, about seven Idoma governorship aspirants, including Chief Steven Lawani contested, while all the Tiv aspirants stepped down for Gabriel Suswam. The Idoma split their votes and could not go far. And even when it was clear that there was no way Suswam could emerge a clear winner from the election, the deputy governor at the time, Mr. Ogiri Ajene and the then deputy Speaker, Ralph Igbago who were part of the seven Idoma that contested against Suswam, asked that their votes be added to those of Suswam; that was how Suswam carried the day.

As punishment for his actions, the then deputy speaker’s father was removed from his position as a village head at the time. In the end, Suswam won the primary, and picked Lawani as his running mate. They went ahead to win the governorship.

The 2011 contest

Like Akume, Suswam had his first term. But towards the 2011 elections when he was gearing up for a second term, he fell out with some chieftains of the party in Tiv land, including his predecessor, Akume. And like Akume again, he also turned to zone C for rescue. Another deal was again allegedly sealed. By this time, Akume had defected to the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and was the one leading the onslaught against Suswam and his team. But for the Idoma people, Suswam would have lost his second term bid in 2011. The massive votes he got from zone C, having lost the election in his Tiv zones A and B woefully to the ACN candidate, made the difference.

Unlike the pact with Akume, there was no clear-cut pact with Suswam concerning Idoma and 2015. However, because of the personality of his deputy, Chief Lawani, and considering the fact that the Idoma people were there for him in 2011, they had thought that Suswam would reciprocate the gesture extended to him in 2011 by supporting them in 2015. But in December 2011, shortly after winning his second term, Suswam in an interview in Kaduna, after one of the Northern States Governors Forum (NSGF) meetings gave what seems like a death knell on Idoma governorship, when asked if he was going to support the emergence of an Idoma person in 2015. He simply said “it is not in my capacity as an individual to determine where power goes at the end of my tenure. It is a collective thing that the majority of the stakeholders will sit down at the appropriate time and take decision on. It is the stakeholders that will determine where the next governor will come from. So, as an individual, even as governor, I don’t have that latitude to sit down and said ‘look, this is the person.’ We can only do that collectively and I believe in collective leadership.”

Unlike in 2003 and 2007, there were also no serious agitations from the Idoma people in 2015, 2019 and 2023 over their ambition to govern the state. Will 2027 be different?