Benue 2023: I am not responsible for your woes – Ortom tells Alia

The Benue State government has fired back at the governorship candidate of All Progressives Congress, APC in Benue State, Hyacinth Alia over his constant verbal attacks against Governor Samuel Ortom.

In a video posted on social media after an event in Gboko, Alia could be heard describing Governor Ortom as a fugitive and insane person.
Reacting, the state government in a statement by Terver Akase, Special Adviser to Governor Ortom on Media, said the legion of court cases against Alia seems to have made him lose grasp of himself, hence his resort to attack on the governor.

The statement reads below.

Since Alia abandoned his priestly calling and joined politics to aspire for the seat of Governor, the only message he has for the people is denigration of the person and office of Governor of the state. Governor Ortom is Alia’s lone ‘manifesto’.

He levels verbal attacks on the Governor at every event where he is given the opportunity to speak. Even when he manages to muster something that sounds like a policy statement/campaign promise, he has always been at a loss pertaining to the ‘how’ of achieving whatever he claims that he would do, if elected.

. For a man who is seeking to govern Benue State, Alia’s description of a sitting Governor as insane goes to reveal how low, intemperate, uncultured and unfit he is.

The combative APC guber candidate is angry with himself and everyone else. He comes across as a frustrated and bitter fellow who sounds similar to a loose cannon. He appears to be regretting why he joined the governorship race. He is now a confused and desperate man who has gone berserk, showing symptoms of emotional insecurity and has found temporary succour in hurling invectives at real and imaginary adversaries.

The legion of court cases against Alia seems to have made him lose grasp of himself, as his recent utterances bespeak the abrasiveness of blames on those who lured him away from the altar of God into partisan politics. But Governor Ortom was not a member of APC when Alia joined the party, so we wonder on which basis he sees the Governor as one of those who misled him to abandon priesthood.

Alia is not being fair to Governor Ortom. The Governor did not ask him to accept the result of a yahoo yahoo primary election that is being challenged in court by a number of governorship aspirants on the APC platform. He therefore ought to redirect his frustration to the persons who conducted the sham election that produced him.

The Governor is also not responsible for Alia’s poor understanding of the workings of government and what he is expected to be telling the people at campaign grounds. He should blame his handlers for not crafting for him an acceptable campaign message beyond accusing Benue people of killing themselves to please his sponsors who are patrons of Fulani herders.

We advise the renegade Benue APC guber candidate to face his multifold of scandals which border on gross insubordination to his superiors, reported diversion of church funds and repeated violation of the oath of celibacy leading to numerous petitions against him by aggrieved parishioners in nearly all the places where he served as a priest before his contumacy and attendant suspension.