By Joe Adekwagh
Another election cycle is here and the political jobbers are back. Benue State is hungry. Not for yams, oranges or rice — they abound.
Benue State is hungry for leadership that shows up at 2:00am when herders strike, that fixes roads without cameras, that chooses service over slander and bad blood.
Yet every four years, the same dangerous myth returns dressed in ethnic robes. It whispers: “It is our turn.”
“Turn by turn” is the laziest formula in politics. It says: Don’t ask what I’ve built. Don’t check my books. Don’t audit my promises.
Just check my surname, my clan, my senatorial district. If the last governor came from Zone A, then Zone B must produce the next one — competence be damned.
This is how states go broke. This is how ministries become ATM cards. This is how bursaries become campaign flyers that never cash.
Benue State has 14 Tiv intermediate areas as well as Idoma, Igede and other minority groups. If we truly ran “turn by turn,” a full rotation would take 92 years.
By then, the last primary school built in 1976 would have collapsed twice. The last teacher hired would be a great-grandfather. And the last road graded would be a museum piece.
The challenges holding Benue State down — insecurity, unpaid pensions, collapsed LGAs, dead industries will not wait for the timetable of ethnic rotation. Bandits don’t check your clan before they burn your village. Hunger does not ask if it is your zone’s turn to eat.
Every election cycle, someone promises “free education” and “student bursaries.” They print forms. They collect “processing fees.” They tell students, “Pay N2,000 now, get N20,000 later.” Later never comes. The administration ends. The papers disappear. The students graduate into anger.
That is not governance. That is a Ponzi scheme with a government letterhead.
Benue State students do not need such governor. The bursary you did not pay in office is the CV you bring to campaign. Voters are reading it.
Former Governor Ortom’s eight years taught us something brutal: your boss’s seat is not your inheritance. Proximity to power is not proof of capacity. Benue watched commissioners, advisers and special assistants assume that carrying the governor’s bag qualified them to carry the state. It does not.
When the administration ended, many of them “yearned to replace” their principal. Delegates looked at their records and said, “No.” Not out of hate. Out of memory. Memory of unsigned memos. Of abandoned projects. Of press releases without performance. Benue State is sentimental but not stupid.
If you could not fix education with a red pen and a budget, what will you do with the whole state and no excuses?
Walk into any market in Gboko, Otukpo or Katsina-Ala. Ask the tomato seller what she wants in a governor. She won’t mention her clan. She’ll say: Stop the killings. I don’t care if you’re Jechira, Jemgbagh or Igede. Can you secure my village so I can farm?
Another thing they would say is, Pay workers. My son teaches for 18 months without salary. Does “turn” pay his rent?
Fix the health centre. My clinic has no paracetamol. My road swallows cars. My school has no roof. Are you coming to commission or to construct?
They may say, Show me your scars. Where did you fight for Benue State before you asked Benue State to fight for you?
That is the new zoning formula: Zone Competence. Zone Courage. Zone Character. Zone Capacity.
Yes, every clan wants to produce a governor. It is natural. It is human. Jechira, Jemgbagh, Kwande, Sankera, Idoma, Igede — all have folks who dream. Ambition is not a crime. But entitlement is.
To say “it is our turn” is to insult every Benue child whose only turn has been to bury a parent killed in a village raid. To say “it is our turn” is to tell the unemployed graduate in Adikpo that his CV is less important than your genealogy.
The Food Basket will not be harvested by genealogy. It will be harvested by policy, by spine, by sleepless nights in security meetings, by IGR that does not depend on FAAC, by tractors that actually arrive.
The next election will be a referendum on insult. Any aspirant who thinks Benue State owes him a governorship because of where he is from will be shocked. The delegates are older. The voters are angrier. The youths are unconnected to clan WhatsApp groups — they are connected to unemployment data.
They have seen what “turn by turn” gave them: abandoned projects and press statements about “enemies of the state.” They want a turn to breathe.
So here is the new deal for anyone who wants Government House Makurdi: Show your work. Not your wrapper. If you ran a ministry, show us one school that still works. One hospital that still admits. One policy that outlived your tenure.
Drop the clan card. If your only manifesto is your tribe, you are running for clan head, not governor.
Explain the money. If students paid you for bursaries, where is the list? Where are the receipts? Where are the graduates?
Tell us how you will kill insecurity without killing the budget. “I’ll pray” is not a security vote.
Governance in Benue State is not relay race. You don’t get the baton because the last runner came from your village. You get it because you can run. Because you have trained. Because you will not drop it when the gunshots start.
The Food Basket is not a family inheritance to be shared “turn by turn.” It is a sinking boat. We need a captain, not a claimant.
So to every aspirant practising ethnic arithmetic, Benue State has moved on. The people are done with geometry. They want results.
It is not your turn. It is Benue State’s turn to be governed well for once. Turn up with capacity or turn off your ambition.
Adekwagh writes from Vandeikya, Benue.
