Opinions: THE LIVING GRAVEYARD CALLED BENUE- by JAM THADDEUS ORDUEN(CEO MSDTAN INVESTMENT LTD)

Benue state now producing mainly negative products like highest HIV rankings, highest in prostitution, highest in cultism and many others. I will attempt to identify the problems, causes and possible solutions.

EDUCATION.

Our educational system is not structured in a way that will yield positive results but our people love to get educated as many consider education as the most important thing in live.

ISSUES

Tertiary – Most of our universities like BSU, UAM and UNI MKAR produce average third class graduates who don’t pass employment requirements of most organisations.


Secondly, students will have like two exams in one day with 5 questions which will carry children like 5a, 5b, 5c, and sometimes sub children again. Most of the times the lecturers will just come in just 2 weeks to exams and give them long notes. The fact is that, most average human brains cannot sussesfully retain such knowledge to answer those questions, except a genius. This is the cause of mass failures and high level of exam malpractice.


Concentration on character- our universities hunt students to get them expelled from school for certain reasons rather than moulding their characters to be useful to the society. This is why our schools will wait till you get to final year before they will expel you for exam malpractice case in 100 level.


Lack of practical education- a graduate of computer science in our universities will hold a computer and be shaking with it, not to mention engineering and many others courses as lecturers tell students to wait until they graduate to get real time practical experience on the job. But the essence is to prepare students for this jobs so as to improve the society.


Lack of clubs and societies in schools as most schools now prefer only Christian societies and consider others like dramatic satanic or worldly things, making most students with those interest to go for blackskuul,(BS) redskins(SKINNERS) for the boys and black bra and Ozaras( where nine people most have sex with a girl to became a member) for the girls. Places like Adikpo, Otukpo and Kastina-ala are notorious for this.

RESULTS


Large unemployment in Benue.


Most big companies in Benue prefer to hire other people from other states to handle technical matters in Benue.


Benue people are many in Abuja but get employed mostly as drivers and security Men.


Inferiority complex among Benue students.


Low ranking of our universities, preventing us from benefiting from many intervention funding’s from domestic and foreign organisations.


Cultism in our schools as frustrated students look for ways to be powerful in schools.


High level of prostitution in our schools.



SOLUTIONS


Lectures should stop twisting questions as the essence is for a student to understand the question and answer so we can have 70 first class graduates like Bayero University Kano.


Reduce the wickedness the school show to students and concentrate on things that matter because, most Benue students now take wickedness as a normal thing and the chain is geting bigger. Example of such is giving student’s twisted questions so that they will fail and then lectures will have advantage of having sex with most and getting kickbacks from others.


Concentrate of practical education.


Reduce the number of questions given to students for they don’t have computer brains.


The schools should implement the policy that most foreign universities do where students are given forms to fill and asked if they are satisfied with their lecturers and if many are not, the lecturers are sacked or re assigned. That will make the lecturers understand that, they are servants and will try to please students by doing what they are supposed to do.


Secondary schools should revive clubs and societies and also revive inter house competitions in schools, also arts festivals and science weeks should be revived in secondary schools.

RELIGION

Religion is an avenue where God,s knowledge is to be taught to people to become better people as God is light, light is power and power is the rate at which work is done, resulting to greater achievements and hence wealth. God is also love but the reverse is the case in Benue as religion has been used to preach hate among the people, enslave the people and get money out of them, bringing with it heaven poverty.

YORUBA SPRITUAL FATHERS- most of the churches our people call powerful spiritual churches has their root from the Yoruba land. Everybody has a spiritual father, including even the smaller or affiliate churches. They started be condemning the traditional catholic church of worshipping of Mary and NKST churches, they now bring doctrines which consider spiritual fathers as superior, given the fathers control over the whole congregation. They now control our state, control who gets contracts and even appointments in our dear state.

TEACHINGS OF HATE-the churches will tell you to watch out for an enemy within. This has cause fights within families, broken homes etc as wifes prefer to spend ten hours in churches to pray for the death of enemies rather than attend to their kids. Brothers are at war with each other because of suspicion of wizardly.

TEACHINGS OF PROSPERITY- these churches introduce dues like first fruits, different tights and so on and gather money from their congregation in retain of obtaining favours from God by chances. Testimonies of how a pastor prayed and suddenly an uncle called and gifted a car are many. The fact is that, our people where not known for such short cuts as now everybody just pray and wait for a miracle to happen without working for it.

RESULTS

WOSHIPING OF HUMANS- our culture was not to prostrate for anybody but you have a situation where people will go down on the floor to honour pastors and ask then to bless them. You see pictures of people greeting our politicians by sleeping on the floor. That is Yoruba culture and not Tiv or Idoma culture and not in our character. This results to withholding of the traditional liberty that our people had and speaking out against wrongs is considered a capital offence among our folks.

AWARD OF CONTRACTS- most contracts in Benue are awarded to people from other states as recommended by the spiritual fathers. This led to capital flights and low purchasing power among our people.

INCREASE IN WICKEDNESS and DEATHS- People now fear to give to others as they believe that their gift will end on others and will make them not to have more, so all is given to the alter of God in the Church. An ill person will be taken to the church for prayers till the person will die in the church. Lizards are now considered a trait as a person of God will testifies to satan sending a lizard to attack them leading to animal cruelty and so on.



DECREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY-people prefer to go for night prayers and sleep the next day when they are supposed to be working. They turn to award any disappointment to work of enemies rather than make efforts. This results to very low productivity among our people.

SOLUTIONS

Arts like dancing, music and so on is not satanic as God made everything for us and for our salvation and is made good by a word of Prayers. Stop teaching kids that music, arts and entertainment are satanic and worldly.

Secondly, people who make wealth don’t make it by chance as they work for their wealth. Also Illumination is the shinning of light and God is the only light that shine upon his children so let stop considering every great achiever as Illuminati and satanic. The bible even teaches that the lamb was worthy to receive the spirits of power, knowledge and understanding, wealth etc and cause people to become a kingdom of priest and they will reign on earth. So it not every wealthy person that made wealth from Satan and is worldly. Wealthiest Man in history is Solomon and his wealth was commanded from God.

Also, the bible ask us to work for our money. Let’s stop hating on people that they refuse to help tyo for everybody has his own challenges at every level they find themselves. Let’s go to work as government only cannot do it for us.





REVENUE

There is growing concern for dwindling revenue both from the federation account. This has given rise to rigid tax regimes by states to generate revenue for developmental purposes.

Danger

In Benue state, there is a case of multiple taxation as there is borehole tax, consruction tax, okada tax etc. This is good in terms of revenue generation but is not on the other hand encouraging private sector to thrive. This has made Benue state one of the most costly places to do business as even a shop goes for 120000 per annum compelled to Kano state where a similar shop goes for 50000.

Multiple tax and other expenditures like power generation couple with low market and hence low patronage is destroying the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), the engine of any economic growth anywhere in the world.

Results

The result is high unemployment rate and a lot of poverty in the land as everybody depends on government.

Again, this will not attract direct investment as even the igbos who used to see Benue as very lucrative for business are leaving the state. Also, indigenes of the state prefer to take their monies else where to invest, leading to capital flight.

Finally, this has created over dependency on government and salaries, hence the complaints and insults on the personality of the governor and other government officials.

Remedies

The government should partner with the federal ministry of trade and investment to create free trade zones in other to attract direct investment to the state. All companies in the trade zone most pay the same salary structure with the state government, reducing the pressure on government.

The government should harmonise tax to avoid multiple taxation.

The government should also relax some of the taxes especially borehole tax for private residence as people are already paying for power bills which they use to pump their water for their own convenience. Other similar taxes should also be relaxed.

The government should create big companies. One example is by merging the Benue agricultural development cooperation with the taraku mills, the tomato factory andjuice factory to create one big company. The government can then sell like 20% of its shares to raise money to get the factories operational again. This will employ many and will help reduce the current pressure on government.

Benue hotels- the government should convert the Benue house in Abuja and Lagos to a hotel and merge it with Benue hotel, also the international hotel by merged also, creating a bigger hotel chain where government can get extra revenue.

The government can get a 15billion bond representing 60% and partner with any foreign bank who will bring the remaining 10billion representing 40% to revitaliselobi bank. Imagine the number of jobs a bank can create for many Benue indigenes. Again, an indigenous bank can help finance mega projects as most current financial institution blacklist Benue with other states as not worthy of heavy financial involvement.

Finally, Benue universities graduate mostly third class graduates who don’t even qualify to apply for jobs as most employers prefer second class graduates. This situation should be checked.

Again, the government should convert all tertiary institutions in Benue to universities in other to benefit from Tetfund and other funding. This will reduce a lot of financial stress on the state.

Written by Jam Thaddeus Orduen