Again, Alia, Ortom fight dirty over N3bn security votes, LG fund

Ortom and Alia

Tensions have flared in Benue State as Governor Hyacinth Alia and his predecessor, Samuel Ortom, engaged in a heated exchange over the management of state and local government finances.

The face-off began after Ortom, through his media aide, Terver Akase, challenged Alia to disclose full details of monthly allocations received by his administration since assuming office, including how much is being disbursed to local governments as security votes and the more than N3bn security votes to the state.

He accused the current administration of starving the 23 local government councils of funds, despite a reported 500 per cent rise in federal allocations.

Alia swiftly pushed back, insisting all allocations from the Federation Account were transparently published monthly.2Baba’s

He dismissed Ortom’s claims as an attempt to deflect from his poor financial record.

Alia’s camp accused the former governor of “chasing shadows” and avoiding accountability for his tenure, during which a dollar sold for N400 compared to the current exchange rate of over N1,500.

Ortom was reacting to the statement attributed to a faction of the All Progressives Congress loyal to Alia.

The APC said the governor “has increased local government security votes from the N1m paid by his predecessor to N10m monthly…”

But Ortom, in a statement by Akase and made available to journalists in Makurdi, on Tuesday, asked Alia to declare how much he was receiving as monthly local government allocations from the federation account before announcing how much he was giving the councils as security votes.

Ortom equally asked Alia to explain why he was still disbursing funds to the third tier of government, despite the Supreme Court judgment granting full autonomy to local governments.