By Aondoakaa Tersugh Daniel | 22/06/2026
The moment Chief Hyacinth Iormen Alia took his oath of office, he turned his guns on Senator George Akume without any visible provocation, and the confusion that followed has lingered ever since. Akume himself could not hide his bewilderment. He has been quoted saying that people should pray for Father, because the man fighting him is not the Father he used to know. Yet a closer look into Alia’s family history reveals that this hostility is not new at all. It is simply genetics finding its way back to the surface.
Decades ago, when Senator Joseph Sarwuan Tarka championed the United Middle Belt Congress and became the face of that movement, Thomas Kastina Alia rose as his fiercest opponent within Benue. The elder Alia went as far as planting the headquarters of Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC, the opposition party of that era, right inside Aliade, the very heartland of Tarka’s Masev support base. The rivalry between the two men was bitter and beyond repair.
As though that chapter of hostility was not enough, another figure emerged to continue the assignment. While Tarka served as a Minister, Godwin Dabo raised allegations of corruption against him, a move that eventually forced Tarka to resign from his position. That blow is widely remembered as one of the most damaging episodes of Tarka’s political career.
This raises a question the Kunav elite of today owe the younger generation an answer to. What truly happened between the Kunav and Jemgbagh people that birthed this chain of political vendetta? Thomas Alia, a Kunav son, frustrated Tarka of Jemgbagh first. Then it was as if a baton had been quietly passed to Godwin Dabo to finish the job. Both men were not only of Kunav extraction but shared the same Kyan constituency, a detail too specific to ignore.
It becomes difficult to understand why Akume, who descends directly from Tarka’s lineage, did not study this history closely enough to avoid walking into the same trap that Alia represents. There is an old saying that a blind man does not allow his roasted groundnuts to burn twice. If the first batch is ruined, he learns to manage the fire better on the second attempt, ensuring it comes out either half done or perfectly roasted. Akume has now looked history squarely in the face and still ended up handing power to the son of Tarka’s oldest political enemy.
So when people call this current war between Akume and Alia madness, they are not entirely wrong, but it is madness with deep roots. It is nothing more than a genetic expression of rivalry that has existed for generations, simply resurfacing in a new political season. Akume owes the memory of Tarka a final reckoning. The score can only be balanced if Akume does to Hyacinth Iormen Alia exactly what Godwin Dabo once did to Tarka.
