Benue: APC stakeholders give Alia condition for truce

The stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State have vowed not to support Governor Hyacinth Alia unless he recognises the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator George Akume, as the leader of the party in the state.

Daily Trust had reported the internal crisis rocking the APC in Benue as mainly a struggle for control of the party’s structure in the state between Governor Alia and the SGF, whose foot soldiers have been at each other’s throats.

The crisis, however, worsened at the weekend when security agencies engaged the State APC executive led by Comrade Austin Agada and other stakeholders after the latter insisted on holding their scheduled meeting to welcome home Dr. Matthias Byuan, who had just secured a federal government’s appointment.

The move by the executives was seen as a flagrant disregard for the directive of the governor cancelling all political activities in the state on account of insecurity.

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But the party stakeholders eventually held the meeting on Sunday evening at the SGF’s Judges Quarters residence in Makurdi instead of the APC secretariat, the earlier venue for the event, which had been taken over by security agencies.

At the stakeholders’ meeting, they unanimously agreed to continue to queue behind the SGF to provide them with the desired leadership.

Addressing the gathering, Byuan expressed disappointment with the governor, whom he alleged went on air to finger him alongside other party stakeholders as those who engaged in the physical violence on Friday in a bid to access the party’s secretariat.

He explained that “I was just coming home to show you (stakeholders) the letter of the appointment that the SGF facilitated for me. We were driving straight to the party office when some youths came and fought us, but our youths overpowered them and entered the secretariat before police started to shoot tear gas.

Also speaking, Senator Titus Zam, representing Benue North West on behalf of the National Assembly members from the APC in Benue, regretted that their cherished party was under siege.

“Our party is under siege by the governor of Benue State. He is new in politics. The party was generous enough to give him the ticket against those long in the party before him. By God’s grace and with the support of all of us, he became governor. Since he became governor, the APC has had no peace.

“We are doing everything possible to ensure stability and peace to return to our party in Benue. It’s unfortunate that we had an embarrassing situation on Friday when our chairman, Agada, was stoned on his way to his office. PDP held a meeting on Monday, and nobody stopped them.

“We all spread out in the state to help him (Alia) win on the day of the election. We will seek the intervention of the national secretariat of our party to ensure that Alia returns home. We have seen a new situation where a party secretariat has sprung up here (Benue), but nobody is going there,” Zam said.

Meanwhile, a Second Republic federal lawmaker, Senator Jack Tilley Gyado, in a summation of the meeting read the unanimous decision of the party during which the stakeholders of the Benue APC passed a vote of confidence on Tinubu, his vice, Kashim Shettima, the National Chairman of the party, Abdullahi Ganduje, and Akume for their giant strides in governance, even as they urged Tinubu to re-contest in the 2027 election.

Reacting, however, the governor, in a statement by his spokesperson, Tersoo Kula, said it was worrisome that the group of stakeholders has stood in the way of Benue progress for a long time by preferring party politics to governance, such that once elections are over, they would distract the winners until they were frustrated enough to leave the party and pave the way for them to start feasting on new aspirants.

Alia maintained, “To them, you are good only when you are contesting elections. It was this same group that saw Gov. Alia as the only messiah to give them victory in 2023, with the majority of them clinging to the Alia effect and popularity to win their elections.

“Despite these series of distractions and unfounded allegations, the Alia administration has a pact, first with the Benue masses, who happily voted him to power, and the administration is doing its best to fulfil the yearnings of the people who are daily passing votes of confidence in the governor and his government. Past governors who served the interests of stakeholders in Benue only left the state highly impoverished and starved of basic developments. Yesterday’s meeting exposed a lot of hypocrisy around the clique of 1999 stakeholders in Benue and their unrepentant quest to see the Alia administration fail.

“By holding a political meeting against a state order in the Makurdi residence of Sen. George Akume, who is himself a former governor, the SGF has again exposed himself as one who is beating the drums of war for the stakeholders to have an affront on the governor; this is highly unpatriotic and condemnable.”