CRACK BETWEEN SGF, AKUME AND GOVERNOR ALIA WIDENING AS TSAV, ASEMA SHUN THANKSGIVING MASS.(PHOTO).

CRACK BETWEEN SGF, AKUME AND GOVERNOR ALIA WIDENING AS TSAV, ASEMA SHUN THANKSGIVING MASS

If signs from the Thanksgiving Mass attended by Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, yesterday in Daudu are anything to go by, then the crack between him and his god-father, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Sir George Akume is widening.

Benue APC State Deputy Chairman, Stephen Tsav, and the party’s Chairman for Guma Local Government Area of the state, Lazarus Asema who both hail from Mbawa District were conspicuously absent at the Thanksgiving occasion yesterday, raising eyebrows.

The crack is believed to have occured over the issue of the Speakership of the Benue State House of Assembly where Governor Alia and his men gave SGF Akume and his camp a bloody nose with the emergence of Aondona Dajoh as Speaker over Becky Orpin.

The development was considered a “biting of Akume’s finger that fed Alia” as the SGF had preferred Becky Orpin and given instructions to the Benue Chapter of APC to implement his decision to have the Gboko-West representative emerge as Speaker.

APC had duly met at the level of the State Working Committee and issued a statement in the media on the eve of the inauguration of the Assembly endorsing Becky Orpin for the position of Speaker, however, on the day of decision, Governor Alia’s men had muscled out the SGF’s choice and put on the seat Alia’s choice, Aondona Dajoh of Gboko-East

Alia’s Chief of Staff, Paul Biam was caught on national television in the chambers of the State Assembly bearing down menacingly on the Benue APC State Chairman, Austin Agada and allegedly threatening the chairman with dire consequences should he mess with the governor’s choice over the Speakership.

The absence of both Tsav and Asema from an occasion where the governor was in attendance right in their home was not lost on watchers of political events in the state.

There was also no notable official of APC in the state with the governor at the occasion, indicating the party is wholly behind its leader, SGF Akume.

Akume is the father and sponsor of APC in Benue and, in line with the maxim of “he who pays the piper dictates the tune” he decides who gets what in the party, with such awesome powers consolidated with his rise to the exalted position of SGF.

Governor Alia who is relatively weak politically, being he not a politician and without a political structure, surely cannot afford a continuation of this fight with the SGF who many claim went to great extents including selling off properties in Abuja to sponsor the governor and the party to power at the 2023 elections.

It is left to be seen how the governor will mend his relationship with his benefactor and god-father, the SGF without which his continued existence in APC is as good dead on arrival.