2027: CHALLENGES OF FIFTH COLUMNISTS IN BENUE SOUTH
*Checking the Senatorial Aspirants of “NO ALIA, NO BENUE” and the Looming Disaster
*There will always be Benue without Alia
By Morgan Adikwu
As a new year begins and attention gradually shifts toward 2027, Benue South is once again confronted with a familiar and dangerous political reality. At a time when the district should be closing ranks to resist marginalisation, suppression, and deliberate neglect, some of its own sons are positioning themselves as collaborators in that very injustice. In political history, such actors are known as fifth columnists, individuals who operate from within to weaken their own people while serving external power.
Today, Benue South is witnessing the emergence of senatorial aspirants who, through silence, complicity, or open alignment with the “No Alia, No Benue” movement, have chosen personal ambition over collective dignity, effectively aiding a pattern of governance that has subjected the district to unprecedented political exclusion and denial.
The political heritage of Benue South was not built on servitude or the canonisation of individuals. It was shaped by men who believed that leadership existed to defend dignity, expand opportunity, and confront injustice regardless of who occupied power. That tradition rejected blind loyalty and elevated principle above personality. It is against this backdrop that the conduct of some present-day senatorial aspirants appears not just disappointing, but dangerous.
The emergence of aspirants openly aligning with the slogan “NO ALIA, NO BENUE” marks a troubling departure from that tradition. To reduce an entire state, its history, its plurality, and its future, to the political survival of one individual is not loyalty, it is political submission. More troubling still is when such rhetoric comes from individuals seeking to represent Benue South, a zone already grappling with exclusion, insecurity, and infrastructural neglect.
Benue existed before Governor Hyacinth Alia entered politics, and it will endure long after his tenure. To suggest otherwise is to insult the intelligence of the people and trivialise the sacrifices that built the state. There will always be Benue without Alia, and no responsible aspirant should mortgage the future of a district on the political fate of one man.
What defines a fifth columnist is not mere disagreement but covert collaboration against collective interest. In Benue South, this manifests in aspirants who either actively defend policies that marginalise the zone or remain mute while its grievances are dismissed. Silence, in this context, is not neutrality, it is consent. Those who seek the Senate but cannot speak when their people are excluded from security interventions, development priorities, or even international attention must be asked: what exactly do they intend to represent?
Even more alarming is the willingness of some aspirants to associate with or sanitise the “NO ALIA, NO BENUE” movement, a posture that weaponises loyalty and legitimises intimidation.
Politics that demands unquestioning allegiance and brands dissent as betrayal is not democratic, it is authoritarian in instinct. When aspirants from Benue South lend their voices to such a movement, they cease to be representatives-in-waiting and become collaborators in their own people’s suppression. That path is not merely cynical, it is politically destructive.
There is also the class of aspirants who hide behind diplomacy while benefiting from silence. They neither challenge injustice nor defend their people, yet they campaign quietly for elevation. The Senate is not a refuge for caution, it is an arena for advocacy. If the realities of Benue South today cannot summon their courage, one wonders what mandate they seek tomorrow.
Against this backdrop, Senator Abba Moro’s posture stands apart. Without romanticising politics, it is fair to note that he has consistently raised concerns where others calculated convenience. His interventions, particularly on insecurity, exclusion, and uneven governance, reflect the basic duty of representation: to speak when silence becomes complicity. Attempts to delegitimise such advocacy by fellow aspirants betray not ideological difference but political envy and self-interest.
The effort to stifle or mock these interventions, especially by those courting favour from power, only reinforces the fifth columnist label. Advocacy for one’s people is not incitement, suppression of such advocacy is the real danger. A Senate seat sought through submission rather than conviction will inevitably serve power, not people.
As 2027 approaches, Benue South must subject every aspirant to rigorous scrutiny. The question is not who shouts loyalty the loudest, but who has the moral clarity to defend the district’s interest even when it is inconvenient. Those who cannot confront marginalisation today cannot legislate dignity tomorrow.
The struggle ahead is not merely electoral, it is existential. Benue South must decide whether it will be represented by voices of courage or by fifth columnists disguised as aspirants. History will remember the choice.
