Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, has revealed what made him leave his priesthood aside to join politics despite how it is perceived in Nigeria.
Alia spoke in an interview with The Nation where he also shared his thoughts on so many other issues affecting Benue and what he has done as well as the plans he intends to implement in the coming months.
It would be recalled that amid all the controversies and opposition, Alia was lucky to not only clinch the governorship ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, but he went ahead to emerge the Governor of Benue State in the 2023 governorship election.
When asked why he dumped priesthood for politics, Alia said, ”Many people have asked similar questions. But the one that thrilled me most was Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State, who taunted me at a time, asking why I temporarily left the cassock to take on the headache of governance. I told him that the answer is quite simple. The church generally has an aim, which is to save souls. The church does not want people to be lost. The aim of my coming into partisan politics is exactly to fulfill that purpose. I came in to save the poor masses of Benue.”
He continued, ”Before my advent into partisan politics, too many things were wrong. I had lived a functional 33 years as a priest with my locals. I’ve been in the trenches with them, and the people I love working for the most are the destitute, the poor masses, those who do not have a voice in our society, who are oppressed, suppressed and neglected. God loves everyone and He does not want anybody, particularly the vulnerable groups in any society, abandoned and lost. These are the people that I felt were never cared for.”
Alia is currently serving his first term in the state also known as ”The food basket of the nation”. He is one of the very few Nigerian priest who contested and won election to occupy a top executive post such as Governor.
