Hon. Abari: Benue Killings’ll Become History After Ortom’s Exit

Come May 29, 2023, a new administration will be inaugurated in Benue State with a new Assembly. As a former lawmaker and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), what’s your impression about the 10th Assembly in terms of its relationship with the executive arm of government as compared to past assemblies? Thank you so much for this opportunity. You cannot compare what we had when we were in the House of Assembly and today. We were not independent and most of the activities of the House then, were linked to bills from the Executive arm of government.

So we were not completely independent. But what we are going to experience now, that is with the 10th Legislative House will also be completely independent. The Autonomy Bill has not been fully granted to them because it was recently signed by President Muhammadu Buhari to grant autonomy to State Assemblies and also to the Judiciary.

These are the arms of government that work together. So if the Judiciary is independent in this process and the Legislators will also be independent.

We are going to have robust activities in the House this time which will benefit of the masses. The outgoing Assembly created an impression that it was almost reduced to a rubber stamp as seen in their unnecessary approvals of requests from the Executive, a development that threw the state into huge debts.

What’s your take on this? You see, when we were in the House, a series of amendments came to us and we gave approval to the local government autonomy, but it is a thing of surprise that the 9th Assembly has rejected the Autonomy Bill for local governments.

I want to tell you that without autonomy, you will not see peace because the state executive, which is led by the governor who is totally in control of the resources and activities of the state, usually muzzles the activities of the State House of Assembly thereby not giving them a free hand to operate.

But during our time, as a matter of fact, we were not strangulated at that level. We told the then Governor, Gabriel Suswam, ‘you are going to help us bring about meaningful development to our rural communities.’ So we granted autonomy to local governments. In fact, the amendment came twice before us and we gave a nod to it.

It is my conviction that if the 9th Assembly had approved the Bill, the issue of insecurity at the various local government level will be minimised. So it has not been well but of course, I would say that it is because of imposing a candidate on the system (the Speaker) that made the 9th House to reject the Local Government Autonomy Bill.

It is unfortunate that the current Speaker (Titus Uba) became the gubernatorial candidate of his party (PDP) and decided that he has seen where money will be coming and that he too will become a beneficiary of the process, he decided to reject the Bill. There are contending interests over who becomes next Speaker in the Benue State House of Assembly and the pressure is on Gboko Local Government to produce the Speaker.

As an old horse, where do you think Abari the next Speaker should come from considering the zoning formula? Well, that is a party decision. You know, from most of the new members, only one from Katsina-Ala is a second timer and the other one who is from Konshisha Local Government area is from the Labour Party (LP) and is completely ruled out of the contest for the speakership position.

Under the new arrangement, I am not completely involved in the zoning of positions where the new Speaker should come from, but whatever the party decides should happen, we the party (APC) members will support it.

But one of the contenders, a lady, is looking at it from a gender perspective. Any comments here? This has been very speculative. The 10th Assembly has not been inaugurated, so the issue of Speakership and jumping the gun and talking about gender, I think is unnecessary in a matter like this because they have not been inaugurated.

They have not gone for an induction course whereby they will know that they are going to gun for this or that. But if the party decides to zone the Speakership to Gboko Local Government precisely, then you are talking of Hons. Mrs. Becky Orpin and Aondona Dajoh. So if the party decides that Hon.

Becky Orpin should be the candidate, so be it, because all of them are newcomers. You see, when we were in the 6th Assembly, we were all newcomers especially when the Speakership was zoned to the Jemgbagh axis and the late Hon. Baver Dzeremo threw himself in the race, Hon. Terseer Tsumba who later became our Speaker also threw himself in the race.

In this contest, even though the independence has been granted to them to sit and bring out a candidate that they feel can lead them very well so that they can have a robust relationship with the executive arm of government.

But then, they have to be tele- guided because they are all newcomers into the game. So the party will have to take a decision where the position should go. Benue is among states of the federation confronted with a huge insecurity challenge. As we speak over two million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are in camps.

What do you think the Rev. Father Hyacinth Alia administration will do to stem the attacks and killings? I want to tell you authoritatively that the day Rev. Alia is sworn-in and the state legislature is inaugurated, you will see a drastic change in the security situation in Benue State.

The governor-elect had been unequivocally campaigning that he is going to do something about that and he has already put machinery in motion to make sure that we have a harmonious relationship and peaceful coexistence with our neighbours and the purported invading herdsmen. So if the new administration comes in, I believe there will be a little bit of calm. In politics, the issue of godfatherism is always emphasised. Rev. Father Alia is governor-elect today possibly because of Akume who is leader of the APC in Benue.

Do you think the godfather issue will affect Alia in due course of governance? Let me tell you, the governor-elect is an independent-minded person that came in and contested and graciously the people of Benue State decided that he should be the governor-elect. He is now the governor of Benue State. But let me inform you that the issue of godfatherism in Nigerian politics and Benue State in particular can never be brushed aside, because most of the politicians coming into the political arena are newcomers.

So you need the party structure, you need people who have been there to create a bridge for you to come in and this case of Rev. Father Alia. You know, we have a leader in the state and the leader is no other person than Senator George Akume. He (Akume) has been there and this is the third time he is bringing in a governor to Benue people.

I think this time around it’s going to be a different thing because when he (Akume) interacted with the State Working Committee (SWC) and stakeholders of the APC, he threw the issue open. So the issue of godfatherism will be there but it will not be completely there because the governor- elect himself came from the background of popularity.

If he is not there, the issue of party in the state would have been a difficult thing. You can recall what took place in the 2019 elections when there was a disagreement between a godfather and a godson. We lost all the party positions and now you can see that the APC had swept all the positions due to the support of Akume to Alia. But don’t forget also that Alia is also coming with massive followership. You know, in politics, you must have followership if you have even with your godfather you cannot win elections. S

o that is what is happening and he (Akume) has repeatedly told us that he has hands off governance and so we are waiting to see that happen. Prior to the emergence of Rev. Alia as APC’s candidate, the party was soaked in crisis bothering on litigations by aggrieved gubernatorial contenders. Is the party leadership considering reconciling with such members to move forward? You see, my take on that issue is, when we were about to consider the issue of going to primaries and candidates getting involved into the holistic decision they will take so that they could choose among them, four of them staged a walkout.

They completely refused to come to where stakeholders of the party met. And be that as it may, we went ahead and the leader of the party, Senator George Akume threw in the towels for us. So we collectively voted that we should go for direct primaries. After that, there were some litigations from aggrieved aspirants that they were not part of that. We will not shy away from saying that they invested heavily in the process of campaigning. So they need to be informed and approached so that peace will reign.

Elections have been won, the man who was given the ticket has eventually won. So in party politics, you don’t just say somebody should go because we need them tomorrow. We will still need them and they have not gone anywhere. You can imagine somebody investing N50 million into the party and the money is not refunded to him. So there is a need for a reconciliatory machinery to be put in place to talk to these people who bought forms and participated actively in the electoral process.

You could recall that there were a series of litigations that the party primaries were not held. We went back, we held the primaries and the same person who is elected now was elected as governor twice. So I know Alia is a man of God and even though he will have to personally set up a machinery of reconciliation, he will do that and he has started doing that.