Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the Benue South Senatorial District in the 2023 general election, Comrade Daniel Onjeh, has condemned in strong terms the invitation extended to some aides of the Benue State governor, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, by the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions, over the alleged misappropriation of N20billion local government funds in the state, describing it as a mere extension of their scheme to discredit Governor Alia.
In a press release issued on Tuesday, Onjeh accused the members of the Benue State Caucus of the National Assembly of orchestrating the invitation as part of a larger plot to disparage and distract the people-oriented leadership of Governor Alia. He said the Benue NASS Caucus was only amplifying the ululations of disgruntled stakeholders in the state, who were finding it difficult to accept and adjust to the new order of governance in Benue State, characterised by the judicious utilisation of the state’s statutory allocations and revenues as introduced by the Rev. Fr. Alia administration as against the old order of sharing monthly allocations amongst the elite and stakeholders.
“Fr. Alia has introduced a total departure from the old order of sharing monthly allocations amongst stakeholders. We know exactly what they are feeling, but they just have to accept and endure it because Fr. Alia is adopting the bottom-top approach to governance. The elites and stakeholders have had their fair share in the past; Fr. Alia is now determined to offer a new lease of life to the long-neglected Benue masses. That’s why he can now pay salaries, pensions and gratuities regularly in the state.
“Meanwhile, the projects that the governor’s detractors are making so much fuss over all have timelags. It’s not like when a government policy or project is pronounced and commissioned, it must be fully implemented on the same day, even though it might have officially commenced. So, because these elites are no longer receiving monthly largesses from the state government, and they are not seeing some projects yet on ground, they are quick to erroneously conclude that the funds earmarked for the projects have been misappropriated by the state government. Why are they in such a hurry, after all, Fr. Alia has actually just started the re-engineering of Benue,” stated Onjeh.
Furthermore, Onjeh highlighted the previous attempt by the Senate to smear the governor through false accusations of dissolving democratically elected local government council officials.
“The Benue APC National Assembly Caucus,” Onjeh stated, “had not concealed its plot to discredit Governor Alia for whatever they hoped to achieve. For months now, they have embarked on a coordinated relentless attack on the governor. They used his appointment of caretaker committee chairmen and councillors for the 23 local government areas in Benue State as an excuse to launch their smear and slander campaign against the governor,” he added.
Comrade Onjeh further opined that the caucus was allegedly working in cahoots with a PDP Senator (Sen. Abba Moro) to assail the governor and discredit his administration. To test the waters, asserted Onjeh, Sen. Moro had taken the lead and sponsored a Motion laced with partisan and self-serving motives in the Senate, titled, “Urgent Need to Halt the Erosion of Democracy: The Dissolution of Elected Councils in Benue State,” which, fortunately, died on arrival for lack of merit.
“Nobody has heard of the Motion again because senators eventually came to terms with the reality surrounding it,” stated Onjeh.
In countering Sen. Moro’s ill-fated Motion, Onjeh stressed that in the first place, Governor Alia did not dissolve any democratically elected LG council, but it was the Benue State House of Assembly that acted within the purview of its powers by recommending the suspension of the elected local government executives found complicit in financial impropriety and mismanagement, adding that the governor only complied by implementing the recommendation.
Furthermore, Onjeh stressed that Sen. Moro’s call for the withholding of Benue State LG funds was based on the flawed premise that the state government wrongfully dissolved elected LG Executives.
“Riding on this false premise, Sen. Moro had mischievously invited the National Assembly to arrogate powers it did not possess; as constitutionally, the State House of Assembly is the only body charged with the responsibility of regulating the activities of the local governments in the state,” noted Onjeh.
The APC chieftain opined that until Section 7 of the 1999 Constitution is amended to grant full financial and administrative autonomy to the LGAs, anything done to the contrary by the National Assembly will be mere window dressing.
“At this point, granting LGAs full autonomy is what the lawmakers should dissipate their energy on, if they are sincere. But as it is now, everything concerning LGAs is still under the State Houses of Assembly’s purview.”
Comrade Onjeh stated that some of the caucus’ members have purportedly used a faceless organization to write a petition against the Benue State Government, accusing it of misappropriating N20 billion.
However, Hon. Dr. Denis Akura, the Special Adviser to the Executive Governor of Benue State on the Bureau for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, had debunked these spurious claims. “Hon. Akura has made it public that Governor Alia did not at any time, direct him to monitor the diversion of N20 billion of federal allocation aggregated to the state’s LGAs. Offering further clarification, Hon. Akura asserted that he was not at the helm of affairs of the bureau from June 23 – October 2, 2023, the period within which the petitioners claimed the phantom diversion of public funds was perpetrated in the bureau,” stated Onjeh.
According to Onjeh, Hon. Akura further stated that in Benue State, the Bureau for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs no longer controls the federal allocation or any funds of the local government areas, as quasi financial autonomy has since been granted to the local governments, where their aggregated federal allocation goes directly to each of their accounts.
“Hon. Akura had also clarified that the Benue State Bureau for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, as mandated by Governor Alia, only supervises, monitors and coordinates the affairs of the 23 local government areas through her Directorate of Monitoring and Inspection. Moreover, to ensure transparency, the designated administrative framework has also directed all the local government area Caretaker Committee Chairmen to, as a matter of compulsion, credit their IGR into the local government area accounts before transferring the same into the expenditures account to spend on driving their policies, programmes and projects. All these decisions are deliberated upon and approved in the monthly Local Government Joint Account meetings.
“The same administrative framework, Hon. Akura explained, had restored normalcy in the regular payment of local government staff salaries, imprest, pensions and gratuities; upfront payment of fresh retirees’ entitlements on or before the 25th of every month, with immediate enrollment on the pension payroll,” stated Onjeh.
Com. Onjeh submitted that it is obvious that the petition of diversion of N20billion Benue LG funds was not motivated by the desire to unearth the truth about the Benue State Government’s utilization of public funds, but a means to an end, a purpose-built vehicle meant to disparage and embarrass the Alia administration.
“The petition is baseless and without substance. One would wonder where this faceless organization was when the previous PDP government in Benue State led by Mr. Samuel Ortom, plundered the state’s coffers dry with the highest level of impunity, and bequeathed to the state a huge salary arrears, especially in the LGAs. Yet, they have the temerity to cast aspersions on an administration that regularly pays salaries. No antigraft agency worth its salt would take the House of Reps seriously on this issue,” he noted.
Expounding further on the matter, Comrade Onjeh stated that having ineffectually sent petitions to the EFCC and the ICPC through a proxy as widely believed, the Benue National Assembly Caucus, in its desperation to show that it is the entity behind the bogus petition, hurriedly manufactured a letter inviting Hon. Dr. Denis Akura and some of Governor Alia’s aides to the House of Representatives to answer questions on the baseless allegation of misappropriation of N20 billion. That, according to Onjeh, was akin to a judge presiding over a case in which he is the complainant.
“I had a similar experience when I was the Chairman of the Governing Board of PRODA, Enugu. The lawmaker that the Board had accused of writing to the agency’s DG demanding payment for a contract that had not been awarded, in fact, when the procurement process for the fiscal year had not even commenced at the agency, was one of those who contrived a committee of enquiry into the crisis rocking PRODA at the time. He wormed his way into the committee, and invited me to appear before it. During the committee proceedings, the lawmaker made strenuous efforts to prevent me from speaking, afraid I might reveal his fraudulence to the world. He didn’t even want me to utter a single word in the National Assembly. He was actually being a judge in his own case,” he added.
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