When The Street Speaks Without Words: How Okada Riders, Pensioners Contributed Money To Buy Governor Alia’s Nomination Form

The plastic chair was empty, but it dominated the room. Placed at the head of the hall in the Benue Motorcycle Riders Association Secretariat, draped in a white cassock with a rosary hung over the backrest, it needed no occupant. Every rider who filed past on April 28th touched the rosary, then dropped ₦200 into a worn carton labeled “For Our Priest.” No speech. No banner. Yet the message was louder than any rally.

Two days later, at the State Secretariat gate, a different kind of procession unfolded. A queue of gray-haired men and women, some leaning on walking sticks, others holding passbooks instead of placards. One by one, they approached a small table manned by the Benue Pensioners Union. Each pulled out an envelope , some containing ₦1,000, some ₦500, others ₦2,000 and and so on and slid it into a box with Alia’s campaign poster taped to the front. No one read a communiqué. But when the oldest among them, 78-year-old Mama Nyitse, placed her envelope down and raised both hands to the sky, the others followed. A silent benediction. A vote cast in gesture.

This is how mass-oriented associations in Benue are writing the 2027 script long before INEC released a timetable. Motorcycle unions and pensioners, two groups separated by age, income, and speed, are speaking the same language: Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia for governor for a second term. The two associations embody the wishes of the generality of the masses.

Since March, a new symbol has entered the lexicon. A small sticker of a priest’s collar on the headlamp. It means “Alia rider.” It also means you’ll remit ₦100 daily to the “nomination purse.” No one is forced.

At the High Level Park, Chairman Terhemba Uje explains  “When a man pays your salary backlog after six years of hunger, you don’t wait, You show him appreciation.”

If the riders speak in revs and nods, the pensioners speak in pauses.

At their meeting in April, the State Chairman of the Pensioners Union, Mr. Michael Vembe, didn’t mention 2027. He only said, “We remember who remembered us.” Then he placed his own envelope in the box and sat down. He didn’t have to say more. The line formed.

The individual contribution was not huge. Most gave ₦500 to ₦2,000 from a monthly pension that, for many, only started flowing again under Alia. But the symbolism is immense. These are people who, for years, carried placards that read “We Are Dying of Hunger.” Today they carry envelopes. The placard was protest. The envelope is a token of appreciation.

Why contribute to a nomination form for a sitting governor with state machinery behind him? The associations answered without words.

A social scientist, Dr Kwaghngu Agber, a lecturer of the Benue State University, explains: “Mass associations in Nigeria have learned that letters get ignored, but symbols get interpreted. A motorcycle convoy riding without horns is a sermon. A pensioner donating ₦500 is a testament. Alia’s strength is that he understands this semiotics. He was a priest before he was a governor. He reads gestures.”

The point was made on Tuesday when a convoy of 300 okada riders escorted three pensioners’ representatives to the APC Secretariat in Makurdi. The riders rode at 20km/h  deliberately slow. The pensioners carried the box. No chanting. When they reached the gate, they placed the box down, bowed, and left.

A party official who received them later said, “They didn’t say a word. But we understood. They were saying, ‘The people appreciate’.

The masses of Benue, long deprived, are now sentimental. The dust on the roads of the state’s major towns speak louder than words ever will. The people are not told, they are seeing the ongoing construction, the gradual transformation of the landscape.

Apart from some few old men and women, several generation of Benue citizens have never witnessed development until now. In less than three years, a brewery built from scratch to replace the Benue brewery sold out without any thing to show for it is almost akin to a miracle.

And the brewery is only one out of many industries springing up in the state since the inception of the governor Alia administration. The thousands of jobs, the thousands of employed youths, the genuine empathy with the downtrodden needs no telling. It is seen. It is felt. And the masses have reciprocated by buying the nomination form of the Reverend gentleman as a loud endorsement.

In Benue, 2027 has started. Not with posters, but with postures. Not with slogans, but with silence. The street has  spoken loud and clear. “We want Rev Fr Hyacinth Iormem Alia again for 2027”.

That is the verdict of the streets.

– Hon. Chief Solomon Iorpev Technical Adviser to the Benue State Governor on Media, Publicity and Strategic Communication