Opinion: Letter to my Tiv (Gwer) brothers on their 2023 governorship agitation

I am constrained to do you this op-ed on account of some very nauseating political agitations you have been championing lately: the narrative of the turn of Gwer for the highest political office in Benue State, on the grounds of Tiv’s traditional values of equitable distribution called “wanaangbian”, I hope I got that right!

I am compelled to ask you if you, in all honesty, feel justified using equity to push for the turn of Gwer “political house” (the nauseating label you have reduced the highest political position in Benue State to) for the governorship seat of Benue State?

I wonder the sort of equity there is you espouse that does not produce in you any moral scruple that in all of your narratives of the rotational governorship position in the state among the so-called “political houses”, the Idomas are not reckoned with, as if they do not constitute any ethnic group worth, deserving of any consideration for the highest political office of governorship position in the state.

Worse, that you speak of governorship position as if it is one traditional chieftaincy autochthonous to the Tivs alone for which the Idomas must be contented with the position of the deputy as a gratuitous privilege! It may shock quite a number of us to know or better still, to be reminded that the agitation for the political structure called Benue State, the structure wherein we are currently and in the most brazen manner, relegated to a near status of onlookers, was actually birthed in Otukpo in 1975. It is still on record that the Idoma speaking areas of the then Benue-Plateau State were the most strident in their agitation for the creation of Benue out of the Benue-Plateau State, an agitation that was backed up by a memorandum submitted to the then Justice Irikefe-led panel on state creation by eminent Idoma sons comprising the likes of Hon. AmehOdo, MP (late), Chief J O Omakwu, (late), Chief Morgan Ogbole (late), among others.

 

It is therefore befuddling that the same state that was sired through the synergic enterprise of the Idomas are today consigned to the fringe and outer boundaries of power in the State, never to be appointed Governor, the Speaker of the State House of Assembly and even as Chief Judge of the State, (save for the half-hearted concession made to the Hon. Justice Adam Onum at the twilight of his career on the bench)  in consequence of the unscrupulous hold on power by the self-professed dominant Tiv ethnic tribe in the State.

While it is ok (even though still not tenable) to push the narrative of voting strength to justify Tiv’s dominance of Benue governorship position in Benue State, it is offensive to sensibility to harp, or better still, insinuate equity as a ground to push for the turn of Gwer for the governorship position in Benue State, when you are not making any pretenseof doing the same equity across board to your other “brothers” across the ethnic divides in the state.

 

CHRIS EDACHE AGBITI, ESQ

COMMENTATOR ON NATIONAL ISSUES

PRACTISES LAW IN OBLA & CO

GUZAPE DISTRICT, ABUJA