A lawmaker, Mr Joseph Boko, has expressed confidence that Benue would enjoy a more purposeful leadership in Gov. Samuel Ortom’s second tenure.

Boko, who represents Kwande West constituency in the Benue State House of Assembly, told newsmen on Monday in Makurdi that the governor would do “much better” because ‘powerful godfathers’ that distracted him throughout his first tenure had been edged out.

The lawmaker regretted that the state was held backward for long owing to the grip of “a very powerful and domineering godfather”.

“With the ouster of this godfather, the stage is now clear for the governor to move in quantum leaps and fulfill his promises to the people, who have suffered this vicious grip for this long.”

He regretted that issues of development had to be jettisoned to achieve demands of the said godfather.

“Benue will go beyond where it is at the moment because the strangle hold of godfatherism has been destroyed; this godfather concept made planning impossible,” he lamented.

He, however, appealed to Ortom to embrace all and run an all inclusive government where all shades of opinions would be accommodated.

Boko assured the people that the nagging issues of non-payment of salaries, pensions and gratuities would be resolved by the incoming administration.

The lawmaker expressed optimism that all financial leakages in tax generation would be plugged to shore up the internal revenue profile of the state.

He also urged the governor to focus on job creation to tackle the nagging problem of youth restiveness.

Boko appealed to politicians to eschew bitterness and join Ortom in moving the state forward.

“Now that the elections are over, I appeal to politicians to bury the hatchet and join Ortom in his efforts to move the state forward. He has succeeded in defending lives and now is the time to feed the people,” he said.

He advised the defeated governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Emmanuel Jime, to shelve his plans of challenging Ortom’s victory in court.

“He does not need to go to court; he has been defeated twice during this exercise and I think it will be a waste of time and resources to do that,” he advised.

He said that the APC lost in the elections because the party had been disorganised, right from the party conventions to the primaries.

The lawmaker, who recently decamped from the APC to the PDP, said that the wrong people were given the APC tickets to contest the general elections, and blamed that on “large scale impunity” allegedly perpetrated by the party’s leaders in Benue. (NAN)

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