
Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia
Benue State stands today at a crossroads of opportunity and vulnerability. Among the Tiv people, the traditional settlement patterns — characterized by sparse, disjointed clan-based homesteads — have not only shaped the cultural landscape but have also created practical challenges in the modern era, particularly in the realms of security enforcement, public health delivery, and housing development.
Governor Hyacinth Alia’s administration, now nearly two years into its mandate, must reckon with this inherited but outdated social infrastructure if it is serious about delivering transformational governance.
The Structural Problem: Dispersed Settlements and Public Insecurity:
As I have previously highlighted in my public writing interventions, one of the root causes of persistent insecurity in Tivland is the lack of organized community layouts. Individual family compounds are scattered over vast expanses of land, often hidden behind thickets, far from neighbors or even motorable roads. This settlement pattern, a legacy of agrarian clan independence, once served the purpose of farming autonomy but today significantly hampers rapid security deployment, community policing, infrastructure development, and economic organization.
In times of crisis — whether from marauding herders or criminal gangs — security forces face daunting logistics simply trying to locate homesteads or intervene quickly. Furthermore, a scattered populace makes it difficult for the government to build schools, primary healthcare centers, water projects, and electrification grids efficiently.
Yet, successive administrations, including Governor Alia’s thus far, have largely treated this as an immutable reality rather than a solvable structural defect.
Public Housing and Public Health: Opportunities Missed:
Despite promises to improve public welfare, there has been little sign that Governor Alia’s government has articulated — much less implemented — a bold housing or health policy suited to the peculiar needs of Benue’s rural majority. Beyond the state capital and a few towns, rural Benue communities remain bereft of organized public housing initiatives, and primary health centers, where they exist, are often isolated and under-resourced.
In an era when many African states are investing in model rural settlements — combining affordable housing, clinics, schools, water schemes, and community policing — Benue State seems stuck in an inertia of low ambition.
This is not merely a governance oversight; it is a lost opportunity to permanently address insecurity, rural poverty, and public service delivery in one masterstroke.
The Revolutionary Path Forward:
Governor Alia still has the opportunity to break with past half-measures by embracing revolutionary policies, including:
1. Initiate a Rural Settlement Consolidation Scheme
Through community engagement and incentives, the state government can pilot organized settlements where clusters of families (preferably by extended clan groups) voluntarily relocate to planned villages or townships. These settlements would feature:
– Access roads
– Electricity grids
– Water supply
– Primary and secondary schools
– Primary health centers
– Community policing posts
International best practices (e.g., Rwanda’s Umudugudu program) show that consolidating rural populations does not mean uprooting their cultural identity but upgrading their living conditions and security prospects.
2. Launch a Benue Public Housing Program (BPHP)
The government can partner with private developers, international donors, and community cooperatives to build affordable housing units, especially in new rural settlements. Financing models could include subsidized mortgages, rent-to-own schemes, or land-swapping initiatives. This would immediately begin to close the housing deficit and demonstrate visible transformation.
3. Overhaul Primary Health Care Delivery
A restructured settlement system will facilitate the establishment of well-resourced health centers within reachable distance of every citizen. Moreover, Governor Alia’s government can adopt mobile clinics and telemedicine platforms (already being piloted successfully in Kenya and parts of Ghana) to bridge service gaps in remote areas until consolidation takes deeper root.
4. Establish a Benue Settlement and Security Agency (BSSA)
This special agency would coordinate settlement consolidation efforts, land reorganization, compensation policies, infrastructure rollout, and liaise with security services to ensure that new communities are secure by design. This approach will require legislation but can become the signature legacy of Alia’s government.
Moving From Rhetoric to Legacy:
It is often said that the real test of leadership is the courage to tackle “inconvenient” problems — the ones too deeply entrenched for populist slogans to fix.
Governor Alia must decide whether he will merely preside over the status quo or engineer a new era of organized, secured, and thriving communities for the Tiv and the wider Benue citizenry.
The scattered homestead structure may have served our ancestors’ needs, but it is today a structural liability. We cannot continue to build public policy on foundations laid for a different age. As I emphasized in earlier writings, “Transformation begins with the courage to question what has long been tolerated.”
Governor Alia’s administration must summon that courage now — or risk becoming another chapter in the catalogue of missed opportunities.

© ShilgbaLeonard Karshima Shilgba, PhD, MS, BS, NCE, FCEA
Professor of Mathematics; Dean, Faculty of Science, Former Director of Academic Planning and Quality Assurance, Pioneer Ag. Vice Chancellor/President, Pioneer Vice President (Academics Affairs), Admiralty University of Nigeria (ADUN) and, Chairman, 9th Governing Board of National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB)
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