ALIA HAS PLUNGED BENUE INTO ITS WORST LEADERSHIP DISASTER IN HISTORY
…The Governor Should Respond to Budgit and GGRI Reports
Benue is currently not being governed, the state is being vandalized, and the vandal is none other than Governor Hyacinth Alia, a supposed catholic priest!
For nearly three years, Governor Alia has turned the state into a theatre of chaos, deceit, secrecy, stinking corruption and suffocating incompetence. What Benue is experiencing today is not mere misgovernance, it is the total collapse of leadership, morality and statehood.
The Forum for Good Governance (FGG) states unequivocally and without hesitation that:
Benue State is in ruins because Hyacinth Alia has crippled the state with the most reckless, confused, rudderless and anti-people administration in our history.
GLOBAL INDICES HAVE DECLARED ALIA A FAILURE, AND BENUE PEOPLE KNOW IT
The Good Governance Rating Index (GGRI), a United Kingdom-based international governance monitor, recently ranked Governor Alia among the absolute worst governors in Nigeria, a humiliation unprecedented in Benue’s history. Findings of organization painted a grim portrait: a governor unwilling to confront insecurity, presiding over spreading poverty, corruption concerns, and a government moving with no direction or purpose.
Another reputable organization, BudgiT’s 2025 Fiscal Performance Index delivered the final blow: Benue is at the bottom of the national ranking – 34, out of the 35 states that were assessed for year 2025 with the exception of Rivers State, following the state of emergency declared in that state for six months.
Despite the largest revenue inflow in Benue’s history as a result of the subsidy removal, the state is drowning in unpaid arrears of salaries, pensions and gratuities, deserted infrastructure, crumbling institutions and near-zero capital development.
Governor Alia has not disputed these reports because he cannot.
The reports all tell the truth that Benue people already live and feel daily.
OVER ₦700 BILLION HAS ENTERED BENUE, YET THE STATE LOOKS LIKE A WASTELAND
Between May 2023 and October 2025, Benue State received:
⁃ Over ₦500 billion in FAAC allocations
⁃ ₦150 billion loans
⁃ ₦85 billion in grants meant to support IDPs
⁃ ₦2 billion monthly in IGR
Yet, despite this astronomical inflow, Benue cannot boast of one major project that has been commissioned. Not one. Not even a basic market toilet in any of the 23 local government areas.
Governor Alia has completely taken over local government funds! Nearly ₦20 billion comes to local governments in Benue State every month but no one knows what the Governor has been using the money for!
Never in the history of Nigeria has a state received so much and produced so little.
Where did the money go?
Why is there no accountability?
Why is everything hidden under a man who served as a priest for 33 years before joining politics?
Governor Alia refuses to answer the above questions because the answers may burn down whatever is left of his credibility.
INSECURITY HAS TURNED BENUE INTO A MOURNING GROUND
After over 200 innocent Benue people were killed in Yelewata in June this year, Pope Leo XIV in far away Vatican condemned the killings and gave the exact casualty figure, but Governor Alia came out quickly to counter the Pope and announced that only 59 people had been killed.
Alia promised to secure Benue and return the IDPs back to their ancestral homes within his first 100 days in office. Today, killings have escalated beyond anything witnessed in the last decade and he is saying nothing and doing nothing!
Alia dismantled critical security structures he met on ground. He suspended enforcement of the Anti-Open Grazing Law. He speaks more for the Fulani than the victims (Benue people).
He blames Benue communities for their own tragedies.
He trivializes killings as “skirmishes.”
He reduces massacres to numbers.
He contradicts himself daily.
Even President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, during a visit in June, publicly rebuked Governor Alia for monumental underperformance and told him to seek help from his counterparts in other states.
BENUE FINANCES ARE NOW A ONE-MAN DICTATORSHIP
On May 30, 2023, Governor Alia shut down all government accounts and became the sole operator of Benue’s treasury.
Since then:
⁃ Due process has died
⁃ The State Executive Council has been sidelined
⁃ The House of Assembly has been caged and taken over
⁃ Local government autonomy has been strangled
⁃ LG funds are being controlled like Governor Alia’s pocket money
Benue is now a treasury on lockdown, controlled by the tyrant called Alia who is answerable to no one.
This is no longer governance.
It is economic hostage-taking.
A GOVERNOR WHO SPEAKS FROM BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH
Governor Alia’s public communication is a catalogue of contradictions, denials, inaccurate claims and reversed statements. His administration has elevated inconsistency to a governing style.
Alia denies today what he said yesterday. He promises today what he abandons tomorrow.
He announces policies he later repudiates. He blames his own people for attacks.
He dismisses national laws he once praised. He folds facts into fiction and calls it governance.
This is not confusion; this is the deliberate weaponization of falsehood.
BENUE IS IN FREEFALL, AND ONLY THE TRUTH CAN SAVE IT
Under Governor Alia, everything is collapsing at once:
Security has failed
Finances are opaque
Development is nonexistent
Institutions are crippled
Public morale is crushed
Confidence in government has evaporated
Even his most loyal supporters now whisper in frustration:
“There is nothing to defend.”
BENUE MUST NOT DIE UNDER SILENCE
The Forum for Good Governance (FGG) declares that the state cannot continue sliding into darkness under Governor Hyacinth Alia’s chaotic and harmful leadership.
Benue people deserve accountability.
Benue deserves transparency.
Benue deserves security.
Benue deserves a governor, not a lone ranger controlling the state like personal property.
We demand answers.
We demand responsibility.
We demand governance.
Benue State will not be buried under silence.
Signed:
Comrade Vincent Tyona
President, Forum for Good Governance (FGG)
