QUESTIONS FOR GOVERNOR ALIA I have a question for my state governor, Hyacint Alia, and his people: what is his governing vision gan? Is it ruling through chaos and conflict? Is that the logic of his governing craft? The man seems to relish picking fights with any and everybody. He also seems to enjoy prolonging existing fights. Conversely, he seems uncomfortable and bored with normalcy and stability. The governor’s fights don’t seem spontaneous. Rather, they look like well orchestrated melodramatic events. The only problem is that one does not know what their end goals and endpoints are. What does he hope to gain from these fights and how do they advance whatever governing outcomes he envisions for Benue state in his first term? I’d appreciate it if the governor’s people would explain it to me in very simple terms and in doing so let us into the internal logic of the governor’s calculation. As we speak, Governor Alia is fighting with his political godfather, SGF George Akume, the state APC and its leaders, the Chief Judge and the state judiciary, his predecessor, numerous political stakeholders, members of the state NASS delegation across all three senatorial zones, and some members of the State House of Assembly. Another question: is he governing through denial? Is denial a strategy of governance? Many parts of the state are being attacked by armed herdsmen simultaneously. Scores are being killed in these attacks. Whole towns and villages are being sacked and occupied by the marauders. IDPs are being produced in numbers not seen recently. Yet the governor’s solution is to simply declare the state’s insecurity crisis solved by virtue of his becoming governor. He declared that attacks have ceased, ordered local government chairmen to accommodate and mollify the attackers, and frowned at people talking about the attacks, as though not talking about them makes them go away and vice versa. You don’t solve a problem by wishing it away or denying it, but that’s what Alia seems to be attempting to do in a perplexingly novel approach to governance. We will see how far this strange paradigm takes him. A final question: does the governor believe that Benue begins and ends in Makurdi, or that flyovers, the costly, concrete, and in some cases unnecessary urban infrastructure that’s the new fad among governors, are the short, medium, or long term solution to the state’s longstanding infrastructure deficit? I hope the governor realizes that the state’s rural areas need as much attention, if not more, than Makurdi.