Alia: An exploiter of the poor, who has not lifted anyone, save himself out of poverty

Suspended Priest of the Roman Catholic Church currently a governorship aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State, Hyacinth Alia, recently promised in the press that he will lift the people of the state “out of the gutter” if made governor.

As a policy, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) avoids engaging aspirants on opposing platforms until they are candidates, yet the party as the sponsoring platform of the incumbent government in the state need to address two issues which have come up for determination from the remarks of Alia.

Are Benue people dwelling in the gutter?

Is the suspended priest competent to lift them out of the gutter, if indeed they are dwelling there?

Firstly, that Alia deems Benue people to be living in the gutter isn’t surprising as his current political leader, Senator George Akume, once deemed Samuel Ortom as Minister of State for Trade and Investment and Supervision Minister of Aviation as being in the gutter from where he made him governor.

It is, therefore, a function of myopia afflicting the opposition party that they tend to see everyone as living in the gutter, particularly when they are making promises during campaigns.

But then, isn’t it rather the continually deteriorating state of insecurity brought upon the state by APC’s incompetence at the federal level which should be deemed as putting the people under gutter conditions?

Secondly, is it not merely a manifestation of the deceptiveness Alia has come to be associated with for him to promise being on a mission to lift the people out of suffering?

When and where did the suspended Catholic priest ever lift anyone out of suffering?

Is it the unsuspecting poor masses whom he deceived with gimmicks of healing with salt-filled water which he sold to them and accumulated a personal fortune from same while worsening their health conditions and deepening their poverty?

Is there anyone anywhere who can come out and show proof publicly that Alia did indeed heal them of any ailment and they are better off therefrom?

Only recently Revd. Father Ede in the Eastern part of the country who also professes a healing ministry, while celebrating his anniversary, unveiled multiple proof of his impact on the lives of the people in tangible works of charity including schools, skills acquisition and social amenities projects he executed for their benefit.

Does Alia have even a single church building project he may point to as having ever completed at any of the stations he served as a priest of the Catholic Church?

But is he not known to have palatial private houses he has built, both for personal use outside of the church and for real estate business brokerage, despite having taken vows to live a chaste and austere life as a priest?

Wasn’t the character of Alia as a contumacious violator of vows and a repudiator of social contracts he voluntarily entered into made known to the whole world recently by the letter from his Superior suspending him from functioning as a priest of the Catholic Church?

If Alia could not honour his vows to the fearsome God Almighty, how should he be trusted to honour agreements with mere mortal men under a democracy, when by his orientation as a priest he ordinarily is won’t to consider lay men as inferior and subject to his unquestionable authority as a superior?

Benue PDP urges Alia to purge himself of any imaginations he might he harbouring that Benue people are all like the poor suffering church goers he has all along been manipulating and fleecing through sale of salted water to amass a fortune with which to fund his inordinate appetites.

In 2023 Benue will not be booty to a renegade priest who the church under which he served was constrained to send packing for contumacious behaviour, that is if at all the broom wielders party succeeds in crashing him onto the ballot through the ceiling, as they are labouring to do.