Professor Dennis Ityavyar is a University don. He served the Benue State Government as Commissioner for eight years and aspired to serve the state as Governor but was not given the ticket. In this interview with a select group of journalists in his Makurdi residence , Professor Ityavyar rated Governor Hyacinth Alia low in performance as Governor, describing him as a monumental disaster. To him, Alia has no capacity to rule Benue State .
He also spoke on his desire to run for governorship again, among other things. SAM TYAV was there for People&Politics.
Excerpts:
Q: For the purpose of this interview and for those who will be reading about you for the first time, it is proper for you to let us know who you are.
Prof. Ityavyar : Okay, my name is Dennis Ityavyar. I have been a university don. Then, I worked with the Government of Benue State as the Honorable Commissioner for the two terms of the Ortom administration.
I contested for governorship, and I was a front-runner. But eventually, it was given to my brother, Uba. We worked very hard, but we didn’t win. And after I left office, I went back to the University of Jos where I lectured as a professor for many years. And I have now voluntarily retired from the University of Jos so that I will face full time partisan politics. And after, when the new government was formed, it was important to give the new government time to prove its mettle. And both logic and convention require that you don’t start opposing people as soon as they come, because we are all in politics for the sake of development. And so, if someone wins, we assume that the people of Benue would want such a person to provide dividends of democracy. So, all of us who are in the opposition, withdrew.
But after two years of withdrawal, it will be okay to stand back and see whether the government in Benue State has done well. And whether there are some critical areas that would need to be different.
So, this is who I am. I need to also say that I played a major role as a development worker. For most of my life as a university professor, I also worked as a consultant. I consulted locally and internationally. I did works in other countries as a consultant. And in Nigeria, my NGO, Intergender, worked in every State and every Local Government of this country. Also, a major player. And I left the NGO to participate in government. So, I am an academician.
I am principally a development worker and an administrator. And maybe now a politician. So, that’s who I am.
Q: Congratulations for serving and then retiring voluntarily from public service. The question I would have loved to ask first, but I didn’t, but which I think is also not late, is that I want to know how life has been with you outside politics since you left office. You said you disengaged yourself.
Prof. Ityavyar : Yeah, well, immediately after politics, I went back to the university to teach. I was taking both undergraduate and postgraduate students. After leaving office, I have graduated many PhDs in the University of Jos. And I supervised projects. Life in the university is good.
That’s where I have been all my life and there is no problem whatsoever. And I resigned recently because I am not used to being an absentee person. Politics, meetings and so on. I will leave Jos and be in Benue to attend a political meeting in Makurdi and then my Local Government and other places. So instead of doing as others do, I would like to focus on one thing at a time. I’ve had very good records in University of Jos and I don’t want to be a stumbling block to the students who will be assigned to me and I will not be there. Those who registered to do their PhD and they are there forever because their supervisors are not concentrating.
So, I would say that life has been good. I have time to play with my grandchildren and my children. We go to parks. We do things together. We do church and I mean, I’m happy.
Q: You said you gave enough time to see what the government was going to do. You are not going to criticize the government. Having watched for two years, what can you say about the present administration?
Prof. Ityavyar : Well, as a lecturer, I would give the present government maybe a D. Their performance on the key things that matter is a D.
Number one is security. Today I was reading how many people have died in Benue since this government took over. But another thing about security is that government has not made any efforts. We all know that the Federal Government has the responsibility for security. But the State government must also show passion and be creative in securing people.
This government, first of all, you all know, and I don’t need to tell you, when people were killed in Logo, they were killed in Agatu, in Otukpo, in Guma, in Makurdi, Gwer West, Kwande, our governor would say that they are skirmishes.
And so the word skirmishes, when they are used in any gathering in Benue now, people will laugh. Two people who are killed, in another place, would be a big deal.
But here when you have 20 people, 30 people, 100 people killed, it is still skirmishes. And so that is very bad enough.
Then there is also the issue of creativity in tackling issues of security. I have not seen anything new. When there was this Anyam Nyor, we were hopeful that this would bring to a stop the one-time killings across Benue. But after the launching of Anyam Nyor, we have not heard anything about them, nothing.
In fact, some people say that even the vehicles that they put on the day of launching, they have not seen them anywhere. Those of you who told me that you are journalists from all the three zones, have you seen the vehicles of Anyam Nyor? If that is political fraud, you can’t deceive your state like that on issues of security.
Those lives that are killed, they are our mothers, they are our fathers, they are our children. And to them, they are gone, and there is pain.
So when you are a governor, you must have passion to secure your people. More recently, when there was a serious problem in Sankera, in Ukum, many people died and the government of Benue State critically understated the number of people who died. Because they knew, but they were telling lies that less people died. And I am told, and I have read in the newspaper that the Ukum people were so furious that when the governor went there, they stoned him and they broke his vehicles.
That is an action that has never happened to any governor in Benue State, as far as I know.
So you can see the degree and magnitude of the anger of people. And when any president, if you see something happen in a place, you go there to console the people. And when you come with authority, they feel that someone is behind them.
But here, I hardly see the governor visit places where people are affected. Even if he goes, there must be pressure before he goes. I was just reading in the newspaper how President Trump went to Texas where there was a flood immediately. Now, that is the most powerful president in the world, a busy man. But he was able to go and see where people have been killed. But in Benue, you don’t see that kind of thing.
So when I say I am giving D, I am not doing so because of anything. You can see with me on the points I am giving. What is very creative about the security situation or preventing killings or Fulani attacks in Benue? I haven’t seen anything that is new.
Then I must also speak about anti-open grazing. Benue people love that. They were the ones who called for anti-open grazing. And when it was established, the people were very happy. You will recall that in the 2019 election, Governor Ortom got an overwhelming victory, in spite of the fact that the power in Abuja was not happy with him. But he got an overwhelming victory. Because the people of Benue believed in him and the anti-open grazing.
Now this government has cancelled that.There are calls everywhere. More recently, I read in the paper that the governor said they cannot implement anti-open grazing law. They don’t have the capacity.
If that is true, what he was saying was that he doesn’t have the capacity to govern Benue. It’s not just anti-open grazing law. Because he must have the capacity. He must do the will of the people. And when they were voting him, they were voting him with the hope that he has capacity to govern Benue, to implement anti-open grazing law. But apparently, he doesn’t.
And when you have friendship with your enemy, then you are the people’s enemy. I am told and I have read in the paper and the news media that our governor is always very close in relationship to the people who are killing our people.
He does not open his mouth to use the word Fulani or Fulani herdsmen. He calls them something else.
And then, on the issue of security, one day the governor stood publicly and said that the people who are killing us, they are from outside and they have the right to be here because of ECOWAS protocol. Our learned friend, SD Hon, SAN, educated him and other people about the ECOWAS protocol.
So he is looking for ways to excuse the killing and he is not stopping.
Last week, I am told that there is a new squad for dealing with security. As soon as the squad was started, there were also killings in Guma. And I don’t know what the squad did and so on.
So, we may love the person but we think that he doesn’t have the capacity, the sagacity and the ability to rule Benue because we want someone who will rule Benue, who will protect Benue people wherever they are. So, on the issue of security, you can see that I am not saying this because I am in opposition. I am saying this for cogent reasons. That is on the issue of security.
And then, on the other issues of governance. There has been some reasonable instability in his government.The Secretary to State Government came, he fired him that he was a liar and a thief and so on; and said unprintable things about him and abused him.
I watched that and having known the person who was involved, that person is not a thief.
And then we wanted to ask what did the man steal? The government said he was sending information, selling information. I think they talk about passport or what kind of information can he sell?
Then, if you have a governor who can disrespect his citizens of that level, perhaps because that person is a professor like me, I also share the pain. If I am the one and I am humiliated and no one is able to tell me why I am being humiliated, that is it.
Then there is the unity. You cannot do anything if the state is very divided. The state of Benue has never been as divided as it is now. There is a sharp division between the governor and some other persons. So the government is fighting opposition and then there is another opposition within the APC. This is not good for us because it gives the state instability. It makes us not to be developed.
People may take this for granted but in any place where there is sharp division, you cannot be developed. We want a situation where the governor can have a big heart and call everyone and say ‘now I have won, I want all of us to rule, to bring our ideas together so that we will develop Benue’.
Throughout this time, we have never seen togetherness. APC itself is so divided. You have two. There is one in Abuja, one here, and then even here, there is another one. There is another division. So it is division, division, division.
How can we develop if we are in this kind of division? I think the present government does not enjoy consensus.
They don’t want to bring people together for development. As a member of the State Executive Council of Benue for some time, I find it strange that when this government started, they awarded many contracts before the Executive Council was established.
Sometimes I hear that major contracts are given out without the approval of the State Executive Council. And then, when we were in government, every time we would be talking of the state workers’ wage, which for Benue is N7billion, N6billion,and so on.
Now, everything is in secret. You don’t know what is the wage pay of Benue. You don’t know how much is generated as internal revenue. You don’t know what comes from Abuja as statutory allocations. So everything is a secret.
When I checked, in most governments, their own security allowance for one month is around N1billion. Our own is three billion. And with this three billion, we cannot exactly know how much, how it is spent, so that we have so much for security.
When there was that problem in Ukum, we were told that the police were ready, but there was no logistics. So they were not able to go there early enough. It was, I think, after three days that they may have gotten security to go to Ukum to intervene.
So, you asked, I have waited for two years. How do I see? This is what I have seen. My in-law has something around High Level there. He cried to me that, that road has been closed for many years, for two years now, because of underpass. And then we have not been able to see it completed. The road here, you heard the crisis around the road, when it was N67 billion for the road of how many kilometers. And then the staff of government, they had disagreement. The due process woman said it was not like that. Did she say it was N28billion? Government says N68 billion. You can’t have such things in a government that has integrity and nobody will say anything. How can you say that? There must be clarification from government that this is the correct position. But the due process person who is supposed to be the last person to vote says it’s N28 billion, government gave this thing at N68 billion. There was this controversy.
The Commissioner for Works could not come to clarify because he’s the one who is expected to present a memo to the Executive Council for their approval. He didn’t come.
And so this is the kind of government we have. Things will happen like this. Nobody will know what is happening. So how can you not give a deal? Because it’s never done. You cannot have these kind of things in other places like Goko, that underpass is still just there.
When there was two years anniversary, there was a lot of commissioning of projects by different states. As a journalist, were you called to go and commission anything? Tell me.
Now, have you commissioned anything? How can you have a two-year government and there is nothing to commission? This is very unusual.
So I think that Reverend Father Alia may be a good priest, but he is not a good governor in terms of implementation, in terms of relationship, in terms of security, in terms of dealing with political issues in the state, in terms of uniting people, and so on. So I think I have answered you in summary form.
Q: Sir, you talked about the failure of the governor to commission projects during the two-year anniversary. I don’t know. Are you talking about his failure to invite us to commission? Do you mean he has not constructed roads?
Prof. Ityavyar : You are the one who should tell me that. How will I know that something is done if you have not commissioned it? You are supposed to tell us that this and this and this is commissioned. So I don’t know.
I don’t go around Benue to know the things he has done. But when there is commissioning, you will write and say that this is that. But I don’t know what he has done. You tell me.
Q: Sir, you talked about divisions within the APC government in Benue State. Are you aware of the PDP, which we learnt, is also divided? So I’d like to ask which faction of the PDP do you belong?
Prof. Ityavyar : No, you are very wrong. Look, PDP has no faction ever in Benue. What happened was that election was done here in Benue and there were some people who felt that they don’t like it. But every Local Government in Benue, the exco that was done, was accepted by the national office. And we are going on very well with our own thing. So if people are telling you that there is a faction, they are telling a lie. Faction means that there are two groups. One has its own this, one has its own this. Did you ever hear of someone saying that I am Chairman of PDP in the state?
Response (from the journalist): Yes, sir. The Suswam faction is alleged to have their own Chairman.
Prof. Ityavyar : Did they have congress? Before you select, people are elected in congress, in the party. The PDP as it exists now, had congress. I had congress in my own Local Government in Vandeikya. I attended and we selected people. Then the wards all had congress. And the state also had their own congress. Now, tell me, if there is no congress, how can you choose these people? Did the Suswam faction that you know, did it have any congress to choose the person? And that person who was the mad lion, when they called his name as the Chairman, he said ‘no, no, no, no, no’, because he was afraid of litigation.
So some people may want to say there was a faction, but there was no faction. And there is no faction in PDP now. But in APC, I’m sure you must be associated with APC, but Agada, was he not chosen through congress? Was this guy who is now Chairman, was he chosen through congress? Yes?
So if you want to stand by the truth, however painful it is, you know that this is not acceptable. This is not acceptable. This is what is called instability, when things are not done right. We had our own congres; yesterday, you were there. You saw all the people. They are not the people who were selected. Everybody who was there was through congress. People selected them, voted for them, and we had this thing, the names sent to Abuja. And before you can have congress, INEC must be there to witness what you have done. Was INEC not invited to our congress when it was done here? They were. The federal exco members from Abuja were here to witness the Exco for the state. So anyone who says that PDP has a faction is mischief. A deliberate one.
Q: Thank you, Your Excellency. We have to take you back to your government. You have scored the present government D. There is allegation that your former governor did not achieve so much in the education sector. Can you please take us back to your policy in education and what was your giant stride as a Commissioner for Education when you were there for eight years?
Prof. Ityavyar : Thank you very much. First of all, as journalists, you need to educate people on situation and context. When we were in government, the allocation that was coming from Abuja, sometimes it would be N1.-something billion, sometimes N2billion.
And throughout the time we were in government, I think the highest we may have gotten in one particular month may be N5billion.
Now I understand that Benue gets up to N20 billion just in one month. And then before we left, the loans and other things that were applied just arrived. When they arrived, the Buhari government didn’t allow them to come to the state. You also need to know that if people are sincere, when you open the newspapers and the media, they talk about governor Ortom never paid salaries. But no other state talks about that. And at that time, there were 28 states that were not paying salaries. Some of them were even worse than Benue. But here is talk about salaries, salaries, salaries.
When we were in government, if there is nothing that was done, the issue of education would not be included as one of the things that we did badly. We did exceptionally well. And if you were in Benue, you see anytime you are going on the streets or on a highway, left and right, you will see new primary schools that were renovated, classrooms were added, and such other things. And not only that, we had the purchase of furniture for primary schools.
As of the time I left, we had purchased more than 100,000 chairs and desks for primary schools in the three zones. And this also was helpful because we were encouraged by the Federal Government or the marching funds. And we did very, very well.
In the secondary school sector, we had a great challenge because we needed to renovate many secondary schools that were dilapidated. But there was practically no money. It was budget. The budget provided for such renovations, but we didn’t get the money.
There was nothing. We had asked for a loan to renovate secondary schools, but the Federal Government blocked it. They said that we cannot get loans because we were in opposition. Buhari, you know what he was. He was like ‘our government was profiling Fulani’, so tacitly he was not happy with us -and his government too.
But we did very well. In the university here, we were the only university that paid academic allowances, which had been accumulated for many years. And we also brought a formula so that it will continue. And we paid other people and allowances, including those who were non-academic staff.
We were responsible for starting to graduate medical students here who had not been graduating for 12 years. And the whole of Benue was giving credit to us for giving the University a lift and graduating medical students.
And in the Law Faculty, we were also giving them the requisite allowances for them to go to Law School and so on.
So I think in the education sector, we did our best within the context and situation we were in. And I think if people think we didn’t do well, I don’t know what they will say we did well.
Q:I think in education, you have understated because for the first time, so many polytechnics under your watch…
Prof. Ityavyar: Yes, it’s true. Thank you. We started the polytechnics here and there.
Q: But the question I want to ask is that you said that in the last election, you contested together with others and you were one of the most frontline contestants but that ticket was given to another person. What gives you confidence at this time around it will not be given to another person?
Prof. Ityavyar: Well, power comes from God. We should not go to look for power that we must win. There is even joy in just contesting.
If you win, good. I had a fantastic program. And even now, the idea of what I can do for Benue is on my palms. I know very well, first as a development person with experience in governance and also in development and being here, there is no way that I will go into office as a governor and wait for six months before I know my left or right. I know the politicians. I know people very well. I can constitute my cabinet within a few months they are in place. And I will be fast in doing everything. Now, saying that what if another person would be given again, there was a president in U.S who contested for 19 times before he won. I hope you have known that. And so this idea that one Buhari contested for three times, I think it’s the fourth time that he won. And there is danger in giving someone who has never experienced any political office, governance. People like me are the best for you.
You need experience which you cannot buy. Now, Alia is a good example. He just came from the church to here and this is a monumental disaster. This is what you call monumental disaster. He has no relationship with people. He doesn’t know what projects to do and how to do them. He is not relating very well with people who will aggregate development. Developing a state is not only building roads. It’s also building people and making the people feel your presence, securing them, feeling good that we have this person. Look at when President Trump was the president the first time particularly. All the Americans were very happy because they were proud of him that he was protecting them. He was doing what they want. There is no such feeling when you are a governor and you go somewhere and people are stoning you.
There is something when you are a governor and you cannot see people; a governor should see his people. He shouldn’t be afraid of his people. If I’m a governor, in the same way you are speaking to me, that is how you will speak to me. I will go for burials. People can come and see me in Government House. They can talk to me. They can feel me. We can eat together. We can laugh together. We can do everything together because I’m in politics. I know that this is what it’s supposed to be.
Have you never heard that when you are to see this governor, you have to wait for days? Because I read things. I’m not inventive. I read that sometimes people sleep there so that they will see the governor. When he comes, I heard of one of the prominent politicians who waited there until he was sleeping and he ended up not seeing him.
All these things are because people don’t have the experience. They don’t know that this power we talk about belongs to the people. And because it belongs to the people, you have to be afraid of people. You cannot maltreat the people and say that they will vote you again. The aggregate, one, two, three people, they come together and they make up what is power. And that is why it is said that the voices of the people are the voice of God.
So when you are maltreating people, everybody is crying. There is huge crying all over, know that is because you don’t have experience to govern. That is because you have never participated in politics. This is because you were given this thing on the platter of gold.
So I don’t care if I contest and don’t win. I will not be the first. I will not be the second. I will not be the third. But I may have contributed because when I go out, the ideas I will share, what I will say to people about my plans for Benue, some people may get it, they may use it. If you are an orphan, someone is advising his son, you wait and you hear and you are better for it.
So, I’m going to contest. And I think that I will win because the people love me. But I think that there is time for anything under the earth. There is time that God has destined. And for me, destiny is 2027.
Q: Thank you very much sir
Prof . Ityavyar : You are welcome.
