9th November, 2021
Benue State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a few days back, took notice of an interface hosted by member of the House of Representatives for Vandeikya/Konshisha Federal Constituency, Barrister Herman Iorwase Hembe, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with members of the academia. The attendance was drawn from tertiary institutions of learning in the state.
The event, we gathered, was part of activities on the lawmaker’s expressed ambition to be elected governor of Benue State in 2023. And not surprisingly, his views before his audience comprised sizeably in criticisms levelled at the running of the state under the administration of Governor Samuel Ortom.
However, from a 4th term federal legislator, our minimum expectation was for his views to have risen above the regular pate of fantastic promises served with the intent to inveigle the support of the unsuspecting and gullible. But we and others who harboured such expectations were disappointed.
We are particularly bemused by Barrister Hembe’s declaration that he will abolish the monthly Joint Account Meetings of Local Government councils and the State Government administration, considering that the meeting derives in specificity from Section 162(6) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999 As Amended) which states inter alia: “Each state shall maintain a special account to be called ‘State Joint Local Government Account into which shall be paid all allocations to the Local Government Councils of the State from the Federation Account and the Government of the state.”
How then does this federal lawmaker, himself a lawyer, hope to achieve his abolitionist declaration? Will he be having that law repealed before his departure from the Green Chamber in the time left for him there, or is he planning outright anarchy; a refusal to heed to and abide by the extant laws of the land?
Shouldn’t the APC guber ticket seeker rather have tailored his views along areas in the law and its application which might need improving upon, against the backdrop that, even with the autonomy being enjoyed by council administrations in the state under the Ortom administration, there might still exist areas for improvement which a succeeding administration could address in the natural order of continual evolvement of governmental policies and actions?
Barrister Hembe also, not surprisingly, waxed vocal about infrastructural decay in the state, in the same glib manner he did about the State/Local Councils Joint Account, the disappointment here again being that for one of his experience, he failed to acknowledge the successess recorded by the Ortom administration in this all important area, albeit the economically handicapped position of the state, not helped by two global economic recessions, the Covid-19 interruption, and the behemoth of intractable insecurity occasioned by killer herdsmen atrocities against farmers, terrorist activities, kidnappings, communal disputes, among many others which have become an albatross on government’s resources.
All of these, notwithstanding, the Ortom administration has invested massively in infrastructural linkages with ongoing construction of major and strategic road arteries in the urban centres as well as rural areas of the state, a feat outstanding in its own right beyond the shroud and din of opposition nay saying.
There has also been major impact in the educational sector with the payment of state counterpart funding to development partners for critical intervention in schools in the form of construction of new classroom blocks, renovation of existing structures, provision of learning aids touching every community across the state, placement of the funding of the state owned Benue State University on first-line charge and enhanced funding to other state owned tertiary institutions, massive intervention in the primary, secondary and tertiary health care delivery systems in the state with the total transformation of state owned health care training institutions including the accreditation and graduation of the first set of medical doctors from the College of Health Sciences of the Benue State University, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Makurdi and other training institutes, as well as upliftment of standards at the Benue State University Teaching Hospital.
The recent privatisation drive of the administration to concession public stakes in moribund industries, in line with global industrialisation trends, has taken centre stage in the state, despite opposition campaigns of calumny against the initiative, but with it the administration has set a sure course to achieving restoration of life back to those industries with an envisaged concomitant yield in employment and multiplier cross-sectoral economic impact in the state.
It is instructive to note that the Jechira representative in the National Assembly may have reluctantly passed a vote-of-no-confidence on the APC controlled federal government over the state of insecurity in the country. But this was inevitable if at all he was to say anything on security; his party cannot be absolved of wholesale blame in the state of affairs which currently ranks Nigeria as the 3rd most terrorised and unsafe of places to live in on planet earth. Here again, he failed to acknowledge the achievements of the Ortom administration in tackling the hydra-headed menace of insecurity. However, it is even more damning a verdict that this particular federal lawmaker has not been known to be vocal on matters of insecurity as it affects his state on the floor of the Green Chamber of the NASS as he was at his interface with the academia. This too, the Benue PDP find bemusing.
It is even more bemusing that the same Jechira representative in the NASS threatening to lead a revolution of some sort in the administration of local government finances was twice removed from House Committee Chairmanship positions on allegations of graft. First, as Chairman of the House Committee on Capital Markets when Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) boss, Mrs. Aruoma Etteh, exposed his soiled hands during a probe into the activities of SEC. Again, former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim humbled him as Chairman of the Committee on Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
The ovation may have been loud for Barrister Herman Iorwase Hembe from his guests at the academia interface, yet when the time comes for Benue electorate to mandate a successor to Governor Samuel Ortom, they will not be applauding common place remarks flung to the gallery, but they will place premium on character and pedigree such as is not ensnared in the shenanigans of graft, but such as is stoic and robust enough of courage to stand in their defence, as Ortom has done, and not be silent, as this federal lawmaker has been, while Benue was turned into a killing field.
Bemgba Iortyom,
State Publicity Secretary,
PDP, Benue State.