Alia: Ex-Benue Gov, PDP Should Seek Our People’s Forgiveness

*Alleges they looted govt’s property, left empty treasury 

*Decries high unemployment, says education will top priority   

George Okoh in Makurdi and Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, has advised the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and a former Governor of the state to seek forgiveness from the people of Benue over what he called the maladministration by his government in the last eight years that led to looting of the state and leaving behind an empty treasury.
He also decried the high level of graduate unemployment in Nigeria and insisted that skill acquisition and entrepreneurship education remained critical towards tackling menace.

In a press release by his Chief  Press Secretary, Mr Tersoo Kula, Alia, who reacted to a press conference by the PDP condemning the recent decision of the state to terminate last minute appointment into the civil service, said it was rather pathetic that the PDP, whose maladministration imposed untold pains and penury on the people of the state was calling for the reversal of the same decisions that former governor Samuel Ortom, took shortly after assuming office in 2015.  
“Just a week and a few days after assuming office, the governor has taken key decisions and deliberate steps that have received applause from the majority of the Benue electorate and from the key decisions and his approach to governance so far, Benue people are basking in a renewed hope that the governor will fulfil his campaign promises,” he said.

The governor said even though the PDP has a right to criticism, it should not  go overboard to make the Benue people angrier, bearing in mind that the party has not been forgiven for the unprecedented devastation it caused the people of the state and must only raise issues that would contribute to reclaiming the lost glory of the state, which was an unfortunate experience that was perpetrated by their leadership.

“The PDP is not ignorant of the fact that all the appointments and recruitments that were carried out by former governor Samuel Ortom at the twilight of his administration, were not done in good faith. Is it not curious that for more than 7 years, Ortom could not employ indigents of the state into the Civil Service, until a few months to the expiration of his tenure?
“This suspicious move should prick the conscience of the PDP to question the motive of the former governor rather than shift the blame to Rev Fr. Alia and his new administration. Thankfully, Governor Alia warned about it before and after he was elected into office.
“It is even more ironic that the PDP, that is now crying wolf, left Government House owing salaries of Benue Civil Servants from December 2022 to May 2023. The same PDP administration left salary arrears of 5 months for state government workers in 2017; 10 months for Local Government workers in the same year, 2017. Under this same PDP government, pensions were last paid in the year 2021.”
On the state of education, Alia, who spoke in Abuja, when he paid what he described as a solidarity visit to Executive Secretary of TETFund, Mr. Sonny Echono, at the Fund’s Headquarters, commended TETFund management for the huge intervention in public tertiary institutions in Benue and the nation at large.
Alia, who noted that his administration would give education top priority in Benue State, also sought partnership with TETFund, to boost the quality of tertiary education delivery in the state.
He said what he has discovered as responsible for high rate of unemployment in Nigeria was that a lot of degrees have been acquired by youth in the country but the “skills are not attached to those degrees, noting this was one of the reasons why both graduates and those who have not attended the four walls of education roam the street across the nation.