By some stroke of what I assume to be sheer coincidence, two separate incidents occurred on Tuesday that brought Benue State Governor Hyacinth Alia’s reputed spitefulness into the news. The first was his predecessor, Samuel Ortom, who granted an interview with Arise News to complain about Alia’s vindictive politics. According to him, Alia disdains the rule of law, witch-hunts, and stops at nothing to run down his opponents. One could easily have shrugged off those accusations as the standard meanness that defines politics in many places until Ortom began to break down the details of his gripe. According to him, Alia seized the 23 official vehicles allocated to him after his tenure ended. He fought in the courts, won the right to have the vehicles back, and was even awarded N5m in damages. Alia has failed to respond to the court verdict, refusing to either return the vehicles or appeal.
Now, it was first reported in 2023 that the new administration raided an automobile workshop belonging to Ortom, seizing about 30 vehicles. At the time, it didn’t matter much because a newly sworn-in politician making a show of his opponent’s corruption is a staple of Nigeria’s political dramas. Former President Muhammadu Buhari, for instance, built moral and political capital when he first came into office by exposing the corruption of his predecessor. The All Progressives Congress kept milking the gains of the campaign against the People’s Democratic Party until the efforts began to blow in their hypocritical faces. Governors (like Imo’s Hope Uzodinmma) routinely do the same, and we have been Nigerian long enough to know this is not so much recovering looted assets as vanquishing your predecessor’s influence so they will never pose a threat to you. It is all just politics, which is why these stories have no lasting value for us except for the few occasions when they reveal the mindset of the people involved.
In Ortom’s Arise News interview, he disclosed that the 23 seized vehicles “legitimately” belonged to him. What amused me most was his obliviousness to testifying against himself when he stated that the vehicles were his and “legitimately” too. He said the vehicles were allocated to him and other members of his administration through the State Executive Council after they had been used for more than four years. He made it sound as if the SEC was an autonomous institution and its decision-making process was separate from him, even though, as governor, he was also the head of the SEC. So, yes, while the transaction itself might be lawful because the SEC approved it, that does not make the process any more “legitimate”. Ortom is correct that government rules allow project vehicles to be declared old or scrap and sold at a token value only after about four years, when their book value is presumed exhausted. But it is also a rule that allows people in public office to manipulate the apparatuses of the state to let them haul public assets away for a token.
Ortom claimed he was not alone in driving away many government vehicles because even his deputy, commissioners, advisers, principal, and special assistants were all allocated those cars for a token sum because they had been used for over four years. You look at that list he reeled out and wonder how many vehicles these guys drove off for cheap at the expense of the public. Maybe 100 or more, but for what, though? For a country as perpetually under-resourced, one where the average age of the cars on the road is about 15 years, it is injudicious to board a vehicle after a mere four years. If you must sell them as scrap, why not do so after 10 years? Also, why not sell them at an open auction so members of the public can get a chance to bid on them as well? When you auction them, you put the money back in the public purse so that it can fund more urgent needs of the state.
What did Ortom and his team do for Benue State that they deserve to take so much at the end of their tenure? This take-take-take attitude is why so much subsidy money is currently flowing to the states, and nothing much has improved in people’s lives. At no point did it occur to Ortom that the money that bought all these vehicles he and his team carted away could have funded education, healthcare, infrastructure, and social services. That is why he could go on television to whine about how what was his “legitimately” was taken from him by a politician who will likely do the same anyway. Theirs is always to plunder, never to plough.
Even in the days of the military government, it was customary to cart away all the items in the government house, including kitchen utensils. It is a habit that Bola Tinubu, as the governor of Lagos, institutionalised by using the judiciary to ensure that the state feeds him until his death, and he did so “legitimately”. By the time he is finally leaving the presidency, one can only imagine the invoice he will issue even to children yet unborn. That is why one cannot blame Ortom for “legitimately” feeling he has been cheated of his rightful due. Everyone does it; why should his case be different? Ortom points to Alia’s refusal to either release the vehicle or appeal the court verdict as proof that he does not believe in the rule of law. But what is the substantial ethical difference between a man who uses the so-called rule of law to expropriate public resources and the one who uses illegitimacy to retrieve them?
It is an interesting coincidence that, on the same day Ortom alleged that his successor recruits thugs to intimidate people in the state, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, Peter Obi, was prevented from proceeding to Yelewata, where he was to meet the residents of the community where more than 200 people were recently killed in an attack. Some men barricaded Gboko Road in Makurdi, the state capital, preventing him from going forward. Some accounts called them “protesters,” while others referred to them as “thugs”. Either way, it does not bode well for Benue and its governor to keep doing this nonsense.
In April last year, when Obi was to visit the same Benue, he was similarly prevented. He claimed he repeatedly tried to reach the governor to inform him he was visiting, but they blocked his access. When he did not hear from the governor, he set out, only to suddenly receive a message telling him he was not welcome. At the time, the governor’s media aide, Kula Tersoo, claimed they were unaware of any visit and could not guarantee anyone’s safety or that of any other individual entering the state without prior clearance from relevant agencies. This year, Kula Tersoo has been all over the place, saying that—once again! —they were unaware of Obi’s reported visit to Benue. Should you not have come up with a better excuse than declaring yourself perpetually unaware?
Tersoo also added that, “If Obi is a threat to him, or maybe he felt that Obi’s coming would cause a problem for him, the right thing to do is to get legitimate (that word again!) security operatives to do the needful and not to gather youths or send them to go and block him.” Now, that is interesting. So, the governor does not use common louts as thugs when he needs to repress those he considers political threats. He goes one step higher and deploys actual security operatives to do the thugs’ job. Does that not confirm Ortom’s testimony of Alia?
