Benue is Nigeria’s worst governed state, a true picture of Afghanistan – Agbese

I was not surprised that Nathaniel Ikyur, the newly appointed Chief Press Secretary to Gov. Samuel Ortom Adorogo, was quick to respond to my anger that Ortom’s poor leadership has turned Benue into an Afghan-like society.

I am bemused at the contents of Ikyur’s response. Maybe because he was in a mad haste to reply my trenchant criticisms of how badly Ortom has led Benue for the past six and half years, Ikyur had the audacity a well-honed liar used to deceiving the public, to deny the obvious.

Ikyur had the arrogance of a man cocooned in odious lies to claim that Ortom pays salaries promptly. As I shall show in this rejoinder, Ikyur lied several times in his response. I shall also demonstrate that to liken Benue to Afghanistan is to understate the enormity of the weight of suffering, pains and poverty which the utterly wicked administration of Samuel Ortom has imposed on Benue.

Afghans could legitimately be offended that I equated their country with the worst state in the Nigerian federation. As unacceptable as the insular and human rights-violating Taliban regime in Afghanistan is, I was generous enough not to have argued that Ortom’s Benue is worse than Afghanistan in many respects.

First, Ortom himself has claimed that there are 1.59 million Internally Displaced Persons in Benue. By all accounts, this figure is highly suspect. It is most probably a figure conjured from a magician’s hat of tricks, but for the sake of an argument, let me give it to Ortom. Let’s admit without conceding that Benue has 1.59 million IDPs. Benue’s war which has been intensified since Ortom unfortunately became the governor of the state, began during the era of his predecessor, Gabriel Suswam. Even, by January 2018, after Ortom had been in office for almost three years, the Benue State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) enumerated only 80,000 IDPs.

Now, even with the de-escalation of the conflicts that have resulted in creating IDPs, Benue’s IDP figure has jumped twenty times the 2018 population. That is, 80,000 versus 1,590,000 people. That means that a staggering 38 percent of Benue’s population are displaced persons. There is no comparable figure anywhere else in the entire global system. Even at the height of Nigeria’s Civil War, no such outlandish number of people were uprooted from their homes.

Benue’s IDP population figure is like salary figures under Ortom. Workers die, resign, or retire and they are not replaced with new employees. Yet, salaries keep ballooning. What is worse, the Ortom administration is petrified of revealing the actual salaries paid every month. I call that Ortom’s magical abracadabra mathematics. You reduce the crisis that creates IDPs and yet the number of IDPs magically increases.

The only reason why 38 percent of Benue’s population consists of IDPs is that it is in someone’s political and other interests to have explosive figures for IDPs. The Talibans are human rights violators, but they do not give outlandish figures for their IDPs. They have a higher degree of morality than to engage in making unsubstantiated claims about displaced Afghans.

By contrast with Benue, Afghanistan has been at war since the Soviet invasion of December 1979. So, Afghanistan has been at war, a war that has resulted in Afghan refugees fleeing to neighboring states and those unable to get out of the country fleeing to other parts of Afghanistan. The total number of IDPs in Afghanistan is 570,482. The total population of Afghanistan is 38.93 million people. Proportionally, while 38 percent of Benue’s population is made of IDPs, only 1.5 percent of Afghans, despite their 32 year-war are IDPs. Even if we add the 2.2 million Afghan refugees to the 570, 482 IDPs as the total number of those uprooted by the war, only 7 percent of Afghans have been forced out of their homes and villages.

The corresponding figure for Benue under Ortom is 38 percent and yet, Ikyur was miffed that I likened the dire conditions in Benue to Afghanistan? Afghans, not Ikyur or Ortom, ought to be the ones taking umbrage at me for comparing their country to Nigeria’s worst-governed state, Ortom’s Benue.

But it does not stop there. Look at the pictures below. Take a close look at a highway in Afghanistan and compare it with picture showing a road in Ortom’s Benue. If Benue’s citizens were to ply Afghan roads, they would think they had died and gone to heaven. It should be noted that much of Afghanistan is in a very difficult and mountainous terrain. Yet, its roads are passable. Benue’s roads on the other hand, are impassable, even for Ortom whose motorcade got stuck in a mud during the last rainy season.

Like the Talibans, Ortom has led a consistent and relentless attack on education. While the Talibans make no secret of their opposition to girls receiving education, Ortom does not discriminate against school attendance by gender. He just creates impossible conditions for anyone, boy or girl, to receive a decent education. Compare the picture of the Afghan classroom with the crumbling infrastructure of a primary school in Ortom’s Benue. In the Twenty-first Century, some Benue students sit on the bare floor in their dilapidated classrooms. Many of the schools have no windows or doors and when it rains, teachers and pupils are drenched from leaking roofs.

The Talibans pay their teachers, very handsomely, by Benue’s miserly standards. The lowest teacher salary in Afghanistan is $324 or approximately 186,300 Naira per month. The highest paid teachers in Afghanistan receive $995 each. Changed to Naira at the current exchange rate, that’s 572,125 Naira a month. I bet many Benue teachers would swoon and fall to the floor if they were to receive such a huge salary. No Afghan teacher, despite receiving huge salaries by Benue’s standards under Ortom, is owed any salary arrears. Yet, Ikyur, ensconced under a canopy of wickedness and odoriferous lies, was angry that Agbese likened Benue to Afghanistan? The Talibans, their antediluvian perspectives on education notwithstanding, would be aghast at the horrible conditions under which Benue’s children try to learn.

Ikyur’s greatest lie in his lie-saturated rejoinder is this strange line: “Even at that, the Ortom administration is prompt in payment of workers salaries while also working tirelessly to find ways to clear the salary arrears and end the pension crises…” Ortom is prompt in paying salaries and but today is November 8. Where are June, July, August, September and October salaries in Ortom’s salary terrorism. Ortom is yet to pay Benue civil servants and most teachers their September salaries. October salaries are now overdue, but Ortom would prefer to mock Benue teachers by dancing and sadistically laughing at the hunger and poverty ravaging workers and retirees in Benue. Workers in Benue have gone without salaries for more than ten months and in Ikyur’s peculiar counting, that counts as prompt?

I have read references to Ikyur as a pastor. I hope that’s his Nollywood appellation. No pastor who preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ would be so cavalier with respect to the welfare of workers. If Ikyur is a real pastor and not a Nollywood actor playing a pastor, he would be familiar with biblical passages admonishing governments in particular to pay their workers their wages. As detestable as the Talibans of Afghanistan are, they pay their teachers and civil servants. We guess even the demons of Afghanistan can teach Ortom a few lessons on human decency.

No Nigerian should have the misfortune of being considered notches below the Talibans in human decency and respect for the human rights of others. Ortom’s nonchalant attitude to the well-being of the Benue people makes Ortom worse than the mullahs and religious terrorists of Afghanistan.

I shall return again to address any other issues raised by the Ortom’s administration in my classification of Benue under him as the Afghanistan of Nigeria.

Bye for now.

Chief Philip Agbese, LLB(Middlesex University London ), MBA ( University of Chichester UK), LLM ( Middlesex University London ) is an aspirant for the House of Representatives, Ado/Okpokwu/Ogbadibo Federal Constituency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress ( APC).