N139.8 BILLION: ORTOM IS RIGHT, ALIA IS CHASING SHADOWS
Governor Hyacinth Alia’s renewed campaign against his predecessor, Chief Samuel Ortom, over the alleged missing N139.8 billion is no longer about accountability. It is about politics and vendetta. More specifically, it is about finding a convenient scapegoat after three disappointing years in office.
After carefully examining the facts surrounding this controversy, we have reached one unavoidable conclusion: Chief Samuel Ortom is right.
The Alia administration is persecuting Ortom because it has failed to convince Benue people with its own record.
Three years into an administration is not the time to keep blaming the past. It is the time to defend your own performance. That is where the Alia government has a problem.
The people of Benue want answers about insecurity.
They want answers about thousands of internally displaced persons who are still unable to return home.
They want answers about agriculture.
They want answers about roads.
They want answers about healthcare and education.
Instead, the government wants Benue State to spend every day discussing Ortom.
That is not governance. It is diversion.
Even more disturbing is the manner in which this alleged N139.8 billion has been pursued.
Chief Ortom has explained that the investigative panels became subjects of litigation. He says the Court of Appeal faulted the process adopted by the lower court, after which the Alia administration itself went to the Supreme Court. Then, mysteriously, it abandoned that appeal and resorted to another panel and a media trial.
Why?
If the evidence is overwhelming, why abandon the judicial process? Why litigate one day and prosecute in newspaper headlines the next?
Justice is established in courtrooms, not in press statements.
Equally significant is Ortom’s claim that throughout his eight years in office, government accounts were audited annually, submitted to the Benue State House of Assembly as required by law, approved and published in national newspapers.
This is not a casual defence. It is a factual claim that can be verified.
If those audited accounts are false, let the government prove it in a competent court. If they are genuine, then the endless propaganda collapses under its own weight.
Allegations are easy. Proof is difficult.
What is becoming increasingly obvious is that the Alia administration is more comfortable investigating yesterday than governing today.
No administration can campaign against its predecessor forever.
Governor Alia has reportedly received over one trillion naira from the Federation Account in just three years, in addition to internally generated revenue and other inflows.
The obvious question therefore is: What has Benue received in return?
This is the question that should dominate public discourse.
Not endless accusations against a government that left office three years ago.
Chief Ortom was therefore right when he said the allegations are designed to divert public attention from the failures of the present administration.
Nothing supports that argument more than the timing.
As the next election approaches, instead of presenting a compelling scorecard, the government of Hyacinth Alia is recycling accusations against its predecessor.
That strategy may generate headlines, but it cannot replace performance.
History does not remember governments for the allegations they made.
It remembers them for the lives they improved.
If roads remain inadequate…
If insecurity persists…
If farmers cannot safely cultivate their lands…
If displaced persons remain in camps…
Then no amount of political persecution will change public perception.
Chief Samuel Ortom is not asking to be shielded from accountability. He is demanding due process and insisting that allegations be tested before competent courts rather than in the media.
That is a reasonable position.
The truth is that governments secure legitimacy through performance, not persecution.
After three years, Governor Alia owns the record of his administration. He cannot continue governing Benue through comparisons with the Ortom administration.
The era of excuses has expired.
The people are now asking a far more important question: What have you done with your own mandate?
That is the debate Benue deserves.
And until that question is answered, the relentless pursuit of Samuel Ortom will continue to look less like accountability and more like an attempt to cover the failures of the present administration.
Signed,
Aloysius Gbakaan
President, Alliance for Truth and Justice (ATJ)
