The elections are in clear jeopardy. In Benue, a state ruled by a priest, state-financed hooliganism targeted at the opposition has sprouted. If a presidential candidate of one of the major parties cannot move around freely, then the elections, even if they hold, will be a sham.
When Governor Alia barred Obi from entering Benue last year, many thought he was clowning. I said Alia was a total Alikirija. I could not put childishness and cynicism beneath a priest who had left the altar of God for the altar of filthy politics. I could not, however, associate Father Alia with political barbarism. I could have bet my farm that Alia, even if duplicitous enough to speak from both sides of the mouth, still had a sense of boundaries. I took it for granted that he knew where to stop. I could not conceive him possessing the same menace as a Wike or an Okpebholo. He ought to have known he was still an ambassador of the Church. He could be an inept governor, unable to lift the poor of Benue, failing woefully to keep his electoral promises. What a man in a cassock must not be is a purveyor of violence. A man who understood sacredness would keep brazen desperation away from elections.
But this is not about a fallen father. Alia says he had no hand in what befell Obi under his nose. He wants us to believe he was guilty only of prophesying it. It could be argued that Obi’s compassion for the victims and survivors of the series of massacres in Benue incites public revulsion against a Reverend Father-governor who belongs to the ruling party and defends the president’s abject inability to protect Benue from the recurrent bloodbaths.
