Benue State Governor, Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia on Friday declared that his recent victory at the Supreme Court puts a heavy burden, and challenges his government to deliver more to the people of the State.
Governor Alia stated this while speaking to State House Correspondents after a closed door meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said, “the victory is sweet and it places more burdens on our output, both the input and output. That is the inspection and the expectation being that even the Courts re-affirmed the mandate the people gave me and I am quite happy on that.”
The Supreme Court had on January 8th 2024 dismissed the appeal by the Peoples Democratic Party and its candidate in the Benue governorship election, Titus Uba challenging his victory in the March 18th 2023 governorship polls.
NewsQuest reports that governor Alia secured victory in the election with 473,933 votes, defeating his closest rival Uba, who had 223,913 votes. The governorship election petition tribunal and the court of appeal in Abuja had also affirmed the election of Alia’s as governor of Benue state.
According to governor Alia, the recent judgement by the Supreme Court implies that his government needs to get out there and do some more, so that Benue people will feel the impact of what they are inspecting.
“When they give you the mandate, it’s an inspection, then what you put out there for them, becomes their expectation and I know it’s very tall, very, very tall and we’ve already started a number of projects. We commissioned 16 roads. Quite a number done with out of the 16 as I’m speaking here now.
“The remaining work is still on on them. We’re hoping that in the next month or two all the 16 roads shall have been completed. The earthmoving machinery is already in place for the underpass and the overpass, and then to go straight into the rural roads development. So these are the projects that we intend to do.
“Work is already ongoing as I’m speaking here on the renovation of the 40 year old State Secretariat. Never been touched before it was quiet in a dilapidated state. So we’re going to reinvent it. We’re working on reforming our civil service work has actually begun and we also have an institute specifically for that,” the governor noted.
He continued that, “on Wednesday, the state exco gave an approval for the Institute to be established just to train and retrain civil service. I feel it’s a milestone on that we understand fully while in civil service, there is an expectation of you. And I’m happy there is an approval and work has already begun on that.
“So plus all those that I have mentioned there are many, many more expectations from the folks. We appreciate the support, they continue to give. We’re going to live up to the expectations and then we keep giving them the dividends of democracy,” governor Alia.
