The Trial of Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, By Sufuyan Ojeifo

When Benue decided to go back to the altar for a governor, it was not out of lack of politicians. It was out of fatigue with politicians.

The choice of Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia in 2023 was both redeeming and redemptive. It was redemptive for a people desperate for departure from the uninspiring Ortom years, and redeeming for Senator George Akume, incumbent Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who had midwifed Ortom’s emergence in 2015.

Akume needed to atone. To do that, he reached for the priesthood. He galvanised his formidable political machinery behind a popular priest whose healing masses and spiritual engagements were writ large across Benue and beyond. That solid ecclesiastical pedigree found anchorage in hard political calculus. The victory that followed enjoyed statewide acclaim. Benue thought it had found a god-fearing, man-caring governor.

What has followed since he mounted the saddle is now the subject of this trial.

—Adasu Came to Baptise Politics—

To try Alia properly, we must recall his precursor.

Very Rev. Fr. Moses Orshio Adasu (1945-2005) remains Nigeria’s first Reverend Father Governor. Elected on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), he governed Benue from January 2, 1992 until the Sani Abacha coup of November 1993 terminated the Third Republic.

Adasu did not merely wear the cassock to Government House. He brought the priesthood into governance.

His immortal line was unambiguous: _”Politics itself is not a dirty game, but it becomes tainted by those who enter it for selfish reasons. I am in politics to baptise politics and make it pure.”_

In less than two years, that baptism left indelible marks.

He founded Benue State University on December 27, 1991 – the state’s most enduring institution. He reactivated and upgraded the College of Education, Oju. He conceived the Tarka Foundation, named after Senator J.S. Tarka, as a centre for history, art and research, sited on five hectares in Makurdi. He initiated BENCO Roof Tiles and the Katsina-Ala Fruit Juice Company as industrial anchors for a largely agrarian state.

Short-lived as his tenure was, Adasu governed as a priest. He left as a statesman.

—Alia Came to Contest Politics—

Unlike Adasu who vowed to purify politics, Rev. Fr. Alia has made no pretension, by his acts since assuming office, to care a hoot.

His pastime has been dominance.

The first victim of that dominance project is the very man who made him possible.

Alia enjoys full governmental control. That was not enough. He wants full political control of the APC structure in Benue, to the point of reducing or outrightly erasing Akume’s influence. Had Akume not been elevated to the federal fortress of SGF, his _nunc dimittis_ would have long been sung by Alia and his choristers in Makurdi.

Akume reached out to the altar to summon a shepherd. What quickly crystallised was what many in Benue now call the great betrayal – the unhealthy enterprise of “Akume-must-be-tamed.”

For this act of treachery, Alia must be tried, not in the Hereafter to which he will presumably return after office, but right here in the temporal court of Benue politics. How and what the verdict will be sits pretty well in the womb of time.

I do not wish to dwell today on how Alia’s gambit to monopolise the selection of candidates for all elective positions in 2027 on the APC platform was undone by the National Secretariat of the party acting in concert with the Presidency. That intervention, high-handed as it seemed, was the most reasonable thing to do to achieve the peace of the graveyard that currently reigns in the Benue APC.

—From Akume to Obi: A Dangerous Gravitation—

That was why I shuddered last week when reports did the rounds that Peter Obi’s convoy was attacked in Benue, and variants that he was barred from setting foot on Benue soil.

I became more scandalised when the imprimatur of the state was evident in that gangsteric act.

It is worrisome that Rev. Fr. Alia is gravitating from betrayal of Akume to the harassment and persecution of Peter Obi – another Catholic, a fellow communicant of the same Church – for a political cause, nay, a curse.

Even though he formally stepped aside from active priestly ministry before mounting the saddle, as required by Canon Law, and would presumably return to it after office, I am amazed at Alia’s dexterous adaptation to the intrigues of today’s Nigerian politics. A man perceptible as a saint only yesterday, now fluent in the oldest tricks of professional politicians.

This is class suicide, and in a far more spectacular and unconscionable fashion than even the professional politicians commit.

Adasu used the pulpit to elevate politics. Alia is using politics to diminish the pulpit.

Adasu built a university that outlived his government. Alia is building a political feud that may outlive his goodwill.

Adasu left us a quote about baptising politics. Alia is leaving us a question: Can a priest who came to redeem politics survive the trial of having contaminated it?

That trial is ongoing. Benue is the courtroom.