When the people of Benue State elected Rev. Father Hyacinth Alia as Governor in 2023, hope returned to the faces of a people long betrayed. A priest was expected to shepherd the flock, not abandon them to wolves. But barely two years into his reign, Benue is soaked deeper in blood than at any point during the tumultuous eight years of his predecessor, Samuel Ortom. It is no longer a question of competence—it is a glaring indictment of failed leadership dressed in cassock.
Since Alia assumed office, Benue has bled continuously. Communities in Logo, Guma, Ukum, Agatu, Kwande, and Gwer-West have come under sustained attacks by marauding herdsmen, armed militia, and bandits masquerading as unknown gunmen. Families wiped out. Farmlands taken over. Mass burials becoming routine. Yet, from the Government House in Makurdi comes no decisive action—just speeches, hollow rhetoric, and media photo-ops at mass graves.
The priest-turned-politician has chosen the path of docility, responding to gunshots with press statements and eulogies instead of strategy and action. His silence is not golden—it is soaked in red. His inaction is not humility—it is criminal neglect. Under Alia, Benue has become an open graveyard, and governance has become a liturgy of excuses.
Where is the fire that once burned in him when he criticized Ortom? Where are the moral convictions that propelled him from the pulpit to politics? If the Alia of old could speak so boldly against the failures of his predecessor, then let the Alia of today be honest enough to admit that he has surpassed Ortom’s failures in less than two years. We no longer speak of cattle routes and grazing reserves; we now speak of massacres and mass burials—of state-sponsored silence in the face of ethnic cleansing.
It is time to ask the hard question: Does Benue need Alia? If there is still a shred of priesthood left in him, he must return to it. If the Catholic Church can still find use for a man who has betrayed the anointing of both the cloth and the Constitution, then let him go back to where he came from. He was ordained to save lives, not preside over their extermination.
We call on all well-meaning Nigerians, civil society groups, religious leaders, youth, and defenders of justice to join the people of Benue in the mother of all protests. This is not just about Benue; it is about Nigeria’s soul. A people abandoned must rise to defend themselves. The bloodshed must end. The graves must cease to expand.
Governor Alia has a choice: to continue walking the path of cowardice, or to summon what is left of his conscience and make history as the first Nigerian governor to resign for failing his people. That would be the most honorable thing he has done since becoming governor—and perhaps, the only pastoral act of his entire administration.
Benue deserves better. Nigeria deserves justice. And Fr. Alia must either lead or leave.
Dr. Akinyemi, an Apostle of Christ sent this article from Lagos
