APC governorship candidate’s accusation of Benue youths as responsible for insecurity, unfortunate – Ortom

Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom has lashed at the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate, Rev. Father Hyacinth Alia for tagging Benue youths as formentors of crisis and instigating insecurity in the State.

The governor reacted to a statement which quoted the suspended priest to have accused Benue youths of crime, wondering what his sponsors tend to achieve by tagging Benue youths as criminals.

In the statement which was issued by the Special Adviser to the governor on Media and Publicity, Mr Terver Akase reads:

“We read a statement credited to the 2023 governorship aspirant on the platform of All Progressives Congress, APC in Benue State, the suspended priest, Hyacinth Alia, in which he blamed insecurity in the state on the youths.

“Alia’s statement is typical of the blame-the-victim narrative the leadership of APC in Benue State has been promoting since 2019. His vitriol against Benue youths has therefore not come as a surprise to many. APC has since given Benue the moniker of people who kill themselves.

“What is shocking is that the renegade priest appears to be in such a haste to impress his sponsors that he has elevated his description of Benue youths to the level of insults, tagging them as idle minds whose stock in trade is fomenting trouble.

“Benue youths may not be perfect but to brand them as purveyors of insecurity is to say the least, unfortunate, unconscionable and unacceptable. Youths of our state are very hardworking people who engage in different entrepreneurial activities, sports and entertainment, to contribute meaningfully to the development of the state and country.

“The desperate APC guber aspirant also launched an unprovoked attack on the Ortom-led administration in a manner that smacked of hypocrisy and crass ignorance of what development entails, coming from a man who seeks to be Governor.

“What the apostate priest fails to know is that every policy that Governor Samuel Ortom has introduced since 2015 is done with the consent of Benue people. The Governor often briefs the stakeholders, among them the clergy, technocrats, politicians, civil servants, civil society representatives as well as artisans, on decisions of his administration and also receives their support.

“The statement of the contumacious priest regarding the current security situation has exposed his shallow understanding of the issues of development and the solutions that work for the people. The suspended priest apparently is mistaking governance to be same as the gatherings where he dances to the ribald songs which insult his fellow APC aspirants.

“Here is a man who does not have any known record of development in all the places where he worked as a priest before his suspension by the church. If he could not bring growth to any of the churches where he served, how can he develop a large entity like the state?

“A priest who until his suspension was no longer trusted by the church to head a parish and was made to serve under his juniors in priesthood certainly has no moral authority to aspire for the leadership of the state. Why has the banned priest Alia not responded to any of the allegations against him bordering on repeated violation of his vows among other atrocities he reportedly committed in the places where he worked before the church sent him packing?

“To affirm that the suspeded priest says one thing but means the other, he is now talking about making mother Mary the First Lady of Benue, if he is elected. We know that Holy Mary is the revered mother of Jesus Christ, so to drag her name into partisanship as the apostate priest Alia has done amounts to heresy, if not blasphemy. But perhaps that is his own way of responding to those who have accused him of serially violating the oath of celibacy.

“Suspended priest Alia ought to face his many battles within the APC and wait until he becomes the candidate of the party (if it ever happens) to qualify to speak as a standard bearer. A man whose name is not found in the register of the party he claims to be vying for its ticket, lacks the right to make the statements attributed to him in that publication.

“An aspirant who claimed to have emerged as a candidate from a fraudulent primary election should not be commenting on activities of a government put in place by a well organized party like the PDP. We are all aware that APC didn’t hold any primary election in Benue State. The fact that many governorship aspirants of the party who were frontline contenders have gone to court to seek redress confirms the report of the APC Appeal Panel which described the process as ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ election.”