Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner of the March 18 governorship election in Benue State.
In the election keenly contested with the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly, Titus Uba, Alia polled 473,933 votes to rival Uba’s 223,913 votes.
The results placed Fr Alia as the state’s governor-elect who will take over from the outgoing Samuel Ortom.
Fr Alia, who campaigned under the slogan “Yes Father,” will be the second Catholic priest to venture into and win Benue State’s top seat after Late Fr Moses Adasu who served from January 1992 to November 1993.
Fr Alia, who hails from Mbangur, Mbadede in Vandeikya Local Government Area, was born on May 14, 1966. He holds two master’s degrees – a Master of Arts in Religious Education and a Master of Arts in Biomedical Ethics at Duquesne University in the USA. He later obtained a doctorate degree in Biomedical Ethics from Duquesne University in the USA
He has held a variety of posts both domestically and internationally. He was the Director of Pastoral Services at Catholic Health Services’ North Campus in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida; the Chaplain at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, as well as at the St. Joseph Mercy Health System in Ann Arbor, the United States. In Jamaica Hospital and Medical Queens, he served in additional roles as coordinator, supervisor, and chaplain.
He also served as the parish priest at St. Jude’s Parish in Koti-Yough, Christ the King Parish, Ado Ekilio, and St. Thomas Parish Anum in Makurdi, among others, at home.
In these roles, he coordinated and oversaw departmental employees, planned, arranged, and led spiritual services, and participated in interdisciplinary hospital committees.
Among other professional associations, he belongs to the American Association of Catholic Chaplains; the Catholic Health Services System Wide Ethics (Committee); the Broward Ethics Committee; the Cultural Diversity and Sensitivity; Mercy Hospital Doctors’ Response to Ethics Consults, and In Harm’s Way, among others. Fr. Alia has delivered papers on various subjects.
Blessed with the gift of healing, his popularity grew in the mid to late 1990s when he organised monthly healing crusades in Makurdi. This crusade attracted Catholic faithful from all over the state.
Reacting to the news, a student of Joseph Sarwan Tarka University Makurdi (formally the University of Agriculture), Josephine Noah, said she was optimistic about governance under Fr Alia. She said that as a priest, he would serve the needs of the people. “Having known the people’s pain, he’ll be able to solve some of these problems,”
Noah added that she relied on history to repeat itself, recalling the achievements of the Late Fr Adasu who gave the state a university in his short time as governor.
A civil servant in the state, Dooshima Linus, said there was a lot of expectation from him which might undermine his performance as a governor.
“When people expect so much from an individual, his ‘high’ performance might not meet up to their standards,” she said.
Linus urged the governor-elect to focus on meeting basic responsibilities such as regular salary payments, while identifying some sectors like health, education, and ensuring they were optimal.
An entrepreneur in the state, Victoria Ododo of Oooh’s Delight, said though Fr Alia had no public leadership experience, the economy of the state would improve if he put the right policies in place.
She identified multiple taxes as one of the issues he must deal with to unleash prosperity in the state.
“Thus if he can harmonise taxes, businesses will thrive under him.”
A resident of Benue State, Terungwa Shankyula, urged the governor-elect to come up with ideas that would lead to infrastructure growth and the state’s overall development.
An development analyst, Philip Ortese, said that projecting how things would be under him might not be fair as no one knew the level of mess he would inherit, which could hinder some of his plans.
“The best place to start will be to ask how we are in terms of government responsibilities – infrastructure, economic growth, insecurity, and public service welfare. We can then ask, where do we want to be? That will give a measurable expected performance from him.”
He concluded that because many had been in a state of poverty for so long, they might be expecting a free flow of cash which might not happen.
Fr Alia will inherit N143.368 billion in domestic debts and $30.472 million in foreign debts.
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