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‘I DUMPED PRIESTHOOD FOR GOVERNANCE BECAUSE OF LOVE’ FR. ALIA SAYING DURING AN INTERRACTIVE SESSION WITH JOURNALIST. HE SAID THAT THE FORMER GOVERNORS OF THE STATE ARE ALL INTERESTED IN THE COMMON FUND OF THE STATE WITH NO CLEAR MAP ON HOW TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE. READ THE FULL STORY BELOW.
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Fr alia granted an interview to the NATION NEWSPAPER where he said to heal the land.
When asked why he dumped priesthood for politics, Alia said, ”Many people have asked similar questions. But the one that thrilled me most was Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State, who taunted me at a time, asking why I temporarily left the cassock to take on the headache of governance. I told him that the answer is quite simple.
The church generally has an aim, which is to save souls. The church does not want people to be lost. My coming into partisan politics aims exactly to fulfill that purpose. I came in to save the poor masses of Benue.”
This is all his statement.
The state generally was in a pitiable state. For years, local government teachers were totally forgotten, pensioners were described as dead people; they were never remembered anymore, and their entitlements were not paid for months, for years. I felt their pains. I had that at the back of my mind.
The church is not against her priests joining partisan politics. Where it is a case of plurality of parties, the church will hold her reservations but at the same time, there is a leeway that if the church judges that the society is too dysfunctional and that the only person to salvage the situation is a priest, then, someone can spring up via the church to save the rest of the people.
Today, we are talking about food insecurity. If we do not have social and civil security, we will not have food security. These are concerning. When we fight for democracy, then, we are fighting for food security because farmers are on the farm, and the government is making its input, giving the farmers the necessary support and encouraging them to do mechanized farming.
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ON THE DIFFERENT HE HAS MADE HE SAID,
I declared a state of emergency on our infrastructure. Our primary schools are down, and as I speak, we have done so much to get rid of ghost schools. Benue had more ghost schools than the existing functional schools.
We then shifted to the civil service where we saw some other things. The state nearly had more casual staff than more permanent staff. We had to weed out some of them, and it is just now that we are coming to terms with reality. We need to recruit, we need to have the best hands at this recruitment and that is what we are doing. A number of places did not even have workers.
Like the Ministry of Works, the entire staff was not even up to 10, but salaries were being paid to large numbers. So, we introduced policy meritocracy which was how we fine-tuned the system to work. Having understudied all these in the last nine to ten months, a huge amount of money has been saved.
ON THE STATE OF INSECURITY AND HOW HE’S HANDLING IT,HE SAID.
Before we were ushered in on May 29, 2023, the security reports on our insecurity were horrible, and it is also on record that you heard that hundreds of lives were lost in one local government. Before you took that to heart, you heard of another one. We had tons of these deaths on our hands, but since we came in, it is on record that there has been relative peace.
How do we know the indices? By the same security apparatus that we have and by the reports we get from our vigilantes, livestock guards, forest guards, and other security apparatus who are working in sync with most of our people. By the situation report we receive every day, we can measure that. Overall, we have relative peace, but at the same time, relative peace does not mean we have absolute peace.
There is some other thing that needs to be addressed. Before now, Federal Government has routes where herders went through to the south to graze and to do their trade. But with the increase in our population, that has been violated. Most of our farmland has also been encroached upon by the increment in the population so, we are yet to address that as a people. The routes are no longer existing.
This made it possible for herders and the armed herders to invade farms. They invade farms, destroy them, and attack the owners if they resist or raise alarm. Their trade should not be a violation of other peoples’ trade. You know Benue people are very law-abiding people, so, once we get rid of these bandits and unknown gunmen, our people will be able to get back to their farmland.
Because of this, we have a lot of IDP camps in the state. The people did not bargain for their farmlands to be taken over by the armed herders and then now by the unknown gunmen. It is highly unacceptable. The Federal Government is trying. We are with them as well, trying to get our people back to their various farmlands so that we get rid of food insecurity.FR. Alia dumped priesthood in this way.
ON THE CRISIS WITHIN HIS PARTY IN THE STATE, HE SAID
Well, in every administration, you expect those who will oppose you. I came in with a plan to rebuild our state. Some people do best when there is a crisis, and there are some political leaders who dug a hole and kept everyone in the state down there, and they don’t want anyone to see the light of day. There was no infrastructure, and no one knew where the monies given to the state were going to. that is why i dumped priesthood.
They did not better anyone’s lives; they took care of their families. We have a conscience and we want a report card that we can present to the people. So, if a select few say they are in charge of the state and that before development comes, they must know when FAAC allocations comes and it must be given to them first before considering any projects for the poor masses. Who does that?
The people brought me to the seat, and they ensured that I presented to them the merits of democracy. They voted me on trust. Remember what we are talking about then, on the issue of Muslim/Muslim ticket and it seems impossible. Benue State is the most populated Christian state, how come we can tell them that it is not about the Muslim/Muslim ticket but it is about the person? Something endeared me to our current president, Ahmed Bola Tinubu. Something made me close to him, his ideology; we are talking about someone who built human capacity, we are talking about someone who saw tomorrow.They usually ask me why do i dumped priesthood. Fr. Alia is the man to beat.
Tinubu saw tomorrow, he fixed Lagos, I was so pleased to hear Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu mention that it was the master plan that was done way back during Tinubu that they are still acting on till today. That is the kind of Benue I pray for. Let all political gladiators come up with ideologies and not dysfunctionality, not developing insatiable appetite to consume everyone by taking all the money. That wouldn’t work.Why i dumped priesthood
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