Among the 2023 set of governors, if there is anyone among them whose people are happy with a measure of “democratic dividends’’ he has provided so far, that governor is, surely, Rev. Father Hyacinth Alia of Benue State. Realizing that his people are largely farmers, Alia went out of his way early this year to ensure that fertilizers, herbicides and other vital farm inputs were made available at the doorsteps of his people. The Tiv people in particular are happy and proud of their governor who is their son.
There are some things that look so small and minor and so insignificant to, especially, the elite who live in the cities and have very little to do with fiber bags used in measuring farm produce for sale or in transporting them across communities and across the entire country. But if a political or economic war should break out today between the Tiv people of Benue State and their neigbours in CRS and beyond, that war will be provoked by an order said to have been given by Gov. Alia concerning the size of bags that must be used in the buying and selling of produce in Benue markets and the ones that shouldn’t. Size 29 is said to be Alia’s approved bags while Triangle and size 100 kg are forbidden. Do not ask me size 29 of what? Neither should you ask what Triangle bags are. They are not for mathematical calculation. The sellers and buyers know those things.
Interestingly, while Alia disapproves of the use of bigger bags in buying produce from his people, he did not forbid their use in bagging purchases and transporting them to buyers’ destinations.
And so, last Sunday November 18, some Udam men and women went to a market in Tiv land and bought some produce such as groundnuts, beans and guinea corn, bagged them in Triangle and 100 kg bags for ease of convenience. Somewhere around the Branch Atser area in Vandeikya LGA near the boundary with the ‘Udam’ people, some hot-blooded youth took the law into their hands allegedly in order to enforce Alia’s order which is not backed by any validly enacted legislation. They mounted a road block and stopped vehicles carrying produce from Tiv land to the Udam country. Since all of them where bagged in the ‘forbidden’ bags, they proceeded to rip them open, throwing and scattering the contents on the floor, demanding that their owners should re-bag them in the size 29 approved bag for purchases.
As to be expected in such a situation, millions of Naira worth of goods was lost as some of the produce were seized or out-rightly pilfered by the youth gang enforcers. When the peoples of Udamheard of what happened to their traders on Sunday night, they were very angry at the unjust fate meted out to their people. On the following day Monday, some of their aggrieved young men rose up and mounted road blocks, preventing their own people from going to Benue or Tiv land for trading business deals, demanding that the Government of Benue apologises for the act of wickedness visited on their people and paying compensation for the severe losses suffered. As at yesterday Friday the 22nd of November in Gakem, Bekwarra LGA of CRS where this reporter is watching this trade war, the economic warfare is still on and both sides are hurting terribly. Many markets in Tiv land are stuck with unsold produce because the Udam people are some of the major buyers of those goods. The Udam people, on their part, who trade in those produce have had their source of living truncated by the demand for apology and a fair deal which has so far not been given.
For many Rev. Alia watchers and admirers, which includes this writer, this is the second and costly mistake of the man’s so far sterling tenure. He ought to know his people better than he has done. Observers say that if you give a Tiv man one mile, he will take 100 miles especially if the order is seen to have come from ‘high above there’ as is the case here. If Gov Alia feels that his people are being cheated in the purchase of their produce with bigger sizes and shapes of bags, he should introduce standard weights and measures and get a valid law made backing their use that will guide the whole conduct of buying, selling and bagging in his land so that all will know what to do.
At any rate, I do not think that his people are being cheated and treated as fools and so they need gubernatorial protection neither do I think the Udam people who go to buy from his people are fools either. If he makes a law or introduces a measure that will make Udam buyers to become absolute losers, no Udam man or woman will go to buy in Tiv land. It is as simple as that. Let the good Gov allow market forces to determine price and purchases of things in Benue.
Alia’s first costly mistake was pioneering ‘the clean sweep’ movement by incumbent governors of the recently held chairmanship and councillorship elections in his state by his party the APC. Alia apparently forgot that he carries a heavy burden of expectation being a Catholic priest in Government House. Is this ‘Father’ saying that whoever you are, once you are in politics in Nigeria honesty, sincerity, fairness and rightness should not be expected from you? That, you must lead or join the others in doing the wrong things? Perhaps, he does not know what some of us expect of a priest of the Lord Most High.
