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From Scholastica Onyeka, Makurdi
The Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), Benue state chapter has lampooned the state Governor, Rev Fr Hyacinth Alia, over his speech to commemorate the Independence anniversary of the nation on October 1st, 2023 describing it as a poetic rendition lacking in substance.
The PDP in a statement signed by its publicity Secretary, Mr Bemgba Iortyom, said 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” are gaining the upper hand and bleeding the people to a slow and painful death.
The party said Governor Alia only used the occasion to deliver a “flowery poetic speech heavy in rhetoric but empty on substance.
“He skirted and surfed on major issues such as agricultural transformation, industrialization, education and security in the manner of a holiday maker 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.”
The party observed 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”.
“In the real Benue at this 63rd anniversary of Nigeria’s independence insecurity has assumed a dimension which Governor Alia surely isn’t aware of, else he wouldn’t have allowed the all important issue of the administration of security under his office to fall into the chaotic mess it is in now, with no Security Adviser after over 4 months in power.”
“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 demeanor 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.”
