Nigerian Concord Newspaper
Contrary to media reports by a wing of Governor Hyacinth Alia’s media unit called Alia Aliamedianetwork, the 2027 Governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in Benue State, Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN has said that he has not sold or negotiated away his mandate to anyone.
This was contained in a worded press statement signed and made available to journalists this morning by his Media Consultant, Terver Akase, PhD.
Recall that Social Medial handlers of the State governor, Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia took to the social media this morning and reported that there was secret meeting which the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume had with the leader of the PDP, Chief Samuel Ortom, PhD and the Governorship candidate of the party, Chief Aondoakaa and asked the candidate to surrender his mandate to Hon. Terwase Orbunde for a sum of N10billion.
The report went further that Aondoakaa, after surrendering his mandate to Orbunde also asked for contracts worth N5bn every three months.
But reacting to the false report, Terver Akase, PhD stated that “The story is so poorly fabricated that its authors could not provide a single shred of evidence to support any of their sensational claims. No document. No bank transaction. No recording. No named witness. No verifiable venue or date of the supposed “secret meeting.” Nothing”
Saying that such meeting never took place, Akase stressed that Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN, remains the duly nominated governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Benue State for the 2027 election. “He has not sold, surrendered, transferred or negotiated away his mandate to anybody. And he will never do so” he added.
He pressed further that a governorship ticket is not a piece of merchandise that can be hawked in a market and handed from one person to another for whatever price. He added that there are laws, party procedures, constitutional requirements and electoral processes governing the nomination and substitution of candidates, noting that the authors of the fiction would have known this if their objective were to inform rather than deceive.
The statement reads in parts: “The latest publication by a group loyal to Governor Hyacinth Alia which goes by the name ‘Alia Aliamedianetwork’ and posted on Alia TV page, claiming that the 2027 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in Benue State, Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN, has “sold” the party’s governorship ticket for ₦10 billion, is a reckless concoction. It is a desperate political fabrication and another indication that Governor Hyacinth Alia’s camp is increasingly unsettled by the Aondoakaa candidacy.
“The story is so poorly fabricated that its authors could not provide a single shred of evidence to support any of their sensational claims. No document. No bank transaction. No recording. No named witness. No verifiable venue or date of the supposed “secret meeting.” Nothing.
“Yet, with astonishing confidence, they claim to know that ₦10 billion was paid “in US Dollars”; that contracts worth ₦5 billion every quarter were supposedly negotiated; what Senator George Akume allegedly told Chief Samuel Ortom behind closed doors; what Ortom supposedly told Aondoakaa; and even what INEC will purportedly do in the future.
“More revealing is the obsession of Governor Alia’s media camp with Chief Aondoakaa.If Aondoakaa is the “factional candidate” they repeatedly claim he is; if he is supposedly burdened by insurmountable legal problems; and if, as they desperately want the public to believe, he poses no electoral threat, why does his name continue to deny the Alia camp sleep? Why manufacture one replacement story after another? Yesterday, it was Pius Akutah. Today, it is Terwase Orbunde. Who will it be tomorrow?
“The pattern has become embarrassingly predictable: invent a secret meeting, attach Senator George Akume and Chief Samuel Ortom to it, announce an imaginary replacement for Aondoakaa, throw in billions of naira to make the fiction sensational, and circulate it on social media hoping repetition will transform falsehood into truth. It will not.
“This latest fabrication has exposed something far more important than its authors intended: the Alia camp has apparently recognized Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa as a formidable threat to Governor Alia’s reelection ambition. Otherwise, there would be no reason for this sustained campaign of rumours, manufactured defections, imaginary withdrawals and fictional replacement candidates”
According to Akase, Benue people deserve a contest of ideas, records and competence, not fairy tales about bags of dollars and imaginary political transactions, noting that if Governor Alia’s media handlers believe their principal deserves another four years, they should tell Benue people what he has done with the enormous resources available to his administration, the latest being the N3 trillion FAAC the three tiers of government shared only yesterday.
He also said that the Alia administration should explain its record on security, agriculture, infrastructure, jobs, education, healthcare and the welfare of the people. “That is the debate ahead of 2027” he added.
“Aondoakaa is in the race. The PDP ticket remains with him. And no amount of propaganda from a frightened political camp will change those facts. Instead of inventing stories about who will replace Chief Aondoakaa, the Alia camp should prepare to face him at the ballot box. 2027 will not be decided by fabricated Facebook stories. Benue people will decide” he concluded.