A cursory look at Governor Ortom’s ‘Our Collective Vision for a New Benue’ -By Sesugh Akume

Someone sent a copy of Benue governor, Samuel Ortom’s ‘blueprint’ for creating a ‘new’ Benue (2015-2019). Without critically perusing it I saw telltale pointers to the fact that his 2015-2019 stewardship may well be like the previous administrations (1999-2015) thoroughly excoriated in the publication. That is if not worse than them, sadly.

First off, Nigerians being a people given to the form of religion, rather than its substance, I get a bit on edge when a Nigerian politician talks about ‘God’, and especially when discussing policy and governance. Run when a politician uses ‘Fear of God’, ‘In God We Trust’, ‘God’ this, ‘God’ that.

Agriculture: I saw nothing on irrigation/all-year farming. In 2015!

Education: Nothing on vocational and technical education, for a state that says it wants to create entrepreneurs and more employment for the populace.

E-governance: What precisely does this fancy term mean?

Guess the recurrent expenses estimated? 75%! Who makes progress such high percentage of recurrent expenditure? Meaning that N150b of the estimated N200b to create the ‘new Benue’ goes to oiling the system, only N50b will be for capital expenses. Genius! This is at the same time the document criticises having too many political appointees and a bloated civil service, etc.

Clearly this is simply a legal ‘yam-eating’ scheme by the ‘goats’ whose turn it is now. After all isn’t it ‘turn by turn’? Let’s call a spade what it is — a spade.

Transparency & accountability: Another fancy expression. How much precisely has accrued to Benue in the last 5 months from statutory allocations, loans, internally generated revenues, bailout funds, etc? Any website or resource anyone interested can access to be up to speed?

As it appears, that disaster, ex-governor Gabriel Suswam may well end up being a saintly statesman as compared to this new occupant of Government House Makurdi. My error, I learnt he renamed it ‘Benue People’s House’.