Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, has dismissed claims by his predecessor, Samuel Ortom, that his administration seized vehicles allocated to him by the State Executive Council at the end of his tenure in 2023.
Ortom made the claim during a recent interview. However, reacting to the allegation, the Governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Tersoo Kula, said:
“These cars were hidden in a mechanic workshop somewhere, and they claimed they don’t belong to Ortom himself. The owner of that workshop took the Benue State Government to court because of this.
“He said the cars were given to him legitimately by the Benue State Executive Council, which he chaired and presided over, and whose members he appointed as commissioners. So, it’s difficult to understand. But then, it has opened a vista into what Ortom entrenched in Benue State as governor for eight years.
“This state was practically run aground by Ortom. I listened to him when he said the government was concentrating on Makurdi, the state capital, but this is tantamount to the fact.
“The owner of the mechanic workshop was the person who first took the government to court. In the first instance, these cars were hidden in a workshop, but it was intelligence from security agencies that some cars had been hidden somewhere, and they had to invade the workshop and discovered the vehicles.”