The lingering spectacle of parallel congresses within the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State is more than a mere procedural gap or irregularity; it is a consciously well-crafted philosophical contradiction. Political parties are built on shared vision and submission to common rules and guides. When political appointees and elected members of the National Assembly choose to conduct congresses in defiance of national directives, they are not merely contesting the structure. They are consciously, deliberately contesting and disrupting the very philosophy of partisanship.
Politics is the art of harmonising differences toward a common and shared good. Not an arena for parallel sovereignties as is the contemporary trend in the Benue APC. The logic of “parallel congresses” is the logic of fragmentation, driven either toward self-destruction or collective mishap.
Benue’s APC political elite must reflect deeply on the burden of representation. Being in the National Assembly (NASS) or being appointed at the national level in Abuja is not about acquiring or recreating an APC version as a private territorial field. No.
Any representation or influence without alignment to APC administration and state governance is actually SABOTAGE. You do not carve a niche arbitrarily. That is even why the brazen, emboldened posturing of Benue-Abuja elites leads one to conclude that there is certainly a BIG MASQUERADING prophet doing the divisive incantations.
When Benue leaders in Abuja operate at cross-purposes with the state government, they inadvertently weaken both the party and the state they claim to serve. In fact, they make it easier to be accused of either usurping or undermining Benue State and Governor Ortom, or of totally wishing Benue State and Governor Ortom bad.
Political capital is not infinite, and when expended in internal rivalry, it can end up doing no good for rivalrists. Benue did not entrust power to its Abuja legislators and appointees to be squandered in factional chess games.
Where is institutional respect for the APC, the national, and even the office of the Governor? National directives create uniformity to protect the party from centrifugal forces. If each state chapter interprets or defies these directives according to local calculations, the party becomes a confederation of ambitions rather than a unified movement.
True loyalty is about adherence to structure and order.
This moment calls for statesmanship, not brinkmanship, and for political appointees and Benue National Assembly members to recognise the larger architecture of power and authority. Cooperating with Governor Alia, the governor’s strategic maturity, and a more dignified path to settle ambition than by gang up or doing “student unionism.”
Governance is about synergy between executive authority at the state level and representation at the federal Abuja level. When that synergy collapses (as it seems), development slows or is paused.
Philosophically speaking, unity is not uniformity but “disciplined plurality.”
Benue Abuja ambassadors should rethink and tow the “harder-yet-easier” path of reconciliation and institutional fidelity over the “ego-trip” of factional clamour and agitation, as they are currently asserting.
Benue Ambassadors in Abuja and their advisers must decide whether history should see them as builders or destroyers. Tomorrow will not judge who controlled Congress; it will judge who preserved the house. Who respected the APC as an institution?
It is high time our Benue Abuja College of Elite takes a deep breath and allows a modicum of sanity to prevail.
The Convener, Aliality – 2nd edition, Mr. Sam Agwa sent in this piece from Makurdi, Benue State capital.
