The Benue of my father has never changed

In my previous publication, I shared a personal perspective on the contemporary political discourse in Benue from the standpoint of a student in search of knowledge.

With many parading as experts of the Benue situation, I was hopeful to get answers on some of the mind-boggling issues that I have never been able to understand. On the contrary, the messages I received regarding my article on the Alia Political Catechism of Benue came from readers who perceived my viewpoint as a clearing up of certain confusions. Whatever happened that my quest for understanding became a clarification of any confusion, I do not know.

What I can confirm, however, is that the scourging experience of my late father as a Benue State civil servant inspired me to seek answers from those who know the Benue state of affairs better. I contemplate my father’s experience in the context of a past that could be a guide in the present to design a desirable future for Benue society.

As a committed elementary school teacher, my father spent three decades (1971-2001) of his life in the Benue State civil service which paid a salary that could not carter for the basic needs of its employees – food, shelter, and clothing. He was only able to afford a bicycle as his personal means of transportation, cycling many kilometers to work, Monday through Friday. In order to survive, he maintained a second job of farm work. He would return from school in the afternoon and proceed to work on the farm in the evening; a schedule that we all followed during my primary school years.

After retiring from his teaching job, he spent his retirement years pursuing his unpaid benefits. He was subjected to numerous verification screenings. Such screenings have remained a regular occurrence in Benue, after each of which we hear reports that thousands of ghost workers have been uncovered. What we do not hear is whether those ghost workers are ever replaced with physical ones. There is scarcely any sign that the project of uncovering ghost workers in Benue has registered any improvement on the payment of real workers.

It is fair to acknowledge that hardly any institution, organization, nation, or state ever acquires an adequate income to balance its expenditure. However, this reality becomes a “moral disaster” when a society with inadequate income or revenue is populated with an adequate number of corrupt individuals who brazenly embezzle what is meant for the common good.

In Benue State, we have the misfortunate of living in such a society where it is a daily struggle for many to secure a meal for their families, while others recklessly spend money on things that are unnecessary. No doubt, there is corruption in every society, but it gets more poisonous and extremely stifling for development in a society without any functional structure to restrain its growth. This is the context in which corruption continues to thrive in the Benue valley where those who work don’t get paid, while those who get paid don’t work.

While Benue is predominantly Christian, it remains incomprehensible why the State has not been able to embrace the Biblical injunction that “a labourer deserves his/her wages” (Matthew 10:10; Luke 10:7). Incessant strikes by aggrieved workers have never been able to help the matter. The adverse effects of nonpayment of workers are unlimited.

In January 2017, I lost my younger brother, a young graduate, whose medical treatment was suspended because doctors in Benue went on strike while he was on admission at the Benue State University Teaching Hospital. This was an absolute tragic experience for my father regarding nonpayment of workers in Benue State, not long before his death in November 2018.

It is no longer news that in Benue, besides strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), various forms of strikes by education workers cause students to spend more time at home than in the classroom. Crime rate among young people is on the rise, and is it out of keeping to count the relentless strikes by academic workers as a related problematic to the rising insecurity in the State?

What engages the young minds when they are not occupied with studying and trying to finish and submit an assignment? Another byproduct of these relentless strikes is the inability of our contemporary graduates to deeply acquire the professional knowledge and skills of their field of study.

Seeing my father’s struggle to survive, despite his educational training and employment in the Benue State civil service, I sometimes wondered why he insisted that going to school to acquire western education was a good idea. With the skyrocketing rate of despondent jobless graduates in Benue and everywhere in Nigeria, I continue to question why we have schools. Students spend years in schools hoping to secure a better future when they graduate.

Then they graduate and start spending the rest of their lives struggling to navigate the hopeless reality that our society has established for the majority of its members. This despairing experience has given rise to a variety of vices, including a religion of prayer warriors alongside battalions of bandits.

There is a growing number of adoration centers and healing ministries across Benue, as in many other parts of Nigeria. Videos of exorcism from some of these centers present a startling phenomenon of demonic possessions in our society.

A critical consideration of this phenomenon may not exclude the question of whether these demonic possessions are exclusively spiritual or partially an effect of the general depressing socio-economic reality of poverty and hopelessness in our land. Is it not possible that hopelessness can create an abyss of darkness in which demons enjoy to dwell? Whatever the case may be, there is no doubt that the soul of our society is in critical condition. We have recited numerous editions of Prayer for Nigeria, but the question remains: When will the Lord come to save us?

Associated with the preceding question, nonetheless, is the issue of whether our practice of religion and prayer is right. In a Communiqué of September 2019, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria observed that religious practice in Nigeria “seems to have little effect on our moral, socio-economic and political lives.” So true! Nigeria is notoriously religious; yet, the severe drought and famine regarding true love, honesty, and selflessness in public service is appalling.

In Benue State, particularly, thanksgiving Masses and prayer services are constantly organized for/by politicians in various churches across the state. However, the continuing lack of people-oriented government and servant-leadership in the state gives the impression that these church ceremonies are just an exploitation of religion. Apart from anything else, they come across as an organized politico-religious scam in which political leaders mendaciously seek blessings from religious ministers in order to plant a garden of agony for the public. Hardly anything gets better.

This has been the Benue in which my father lived and died. Thus, regardless of its right and wrong, the decision by Fr. Alia to contest for governor of Benue State is lionhearted. Not many priests, even in the absence of canonical sanctions, would accept to risk stepping out of their comfort zone for such a challenge. In the midst of unlimited selfish interests, I can imagine that tackling the reality of political mischief that has taken Benue State hostage is a titanic project. But I wish that Fr. Alia may never forget in his pulpit-to-politics decision that positive changes are usually born of great sacrifices, which are never the results of selfishness.

What drives my interest in the contemporary Benue political conversation is the hope that by a miracle of positive change someday, our state might have life. I do not desire the continuation of a Benue in which poverty is the only inheritance that many parents are able to pass on to their children.

Paul Utser writes from Ottawa Ontario, Canada.

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