Benue commissioner under fire over transformer distribution to communities

TRACKING_____The Benue state commissioner for rural development and cooperatives, Engr Victor Ukaha, has come under fire over the dust arising from the distribution of transformers to 27 communities in the state.

Some of the communities criticised the process and made allegations of sharp practices, including extortion of benefiting communities, as condition for release of the transformers to them. This, they said, was at variance with the official instructions of the state government that the transformers should be issued to communities at no cost.

Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state had, penultimate Tuesday, flagged off the distribution of 60 transformers the state government procured for distribution to some communities in the state. During the ceremony, he had charged officials of the ministry to ensure that the beneficiary communities got their transformers free of charge.

Despite the stern warning, however, some of the communities have fingered the ministry and its officials in some back-hand measures like extortion and misappropriation of some of the transformers to other communities that were not initially listed to benefit.

The spokesman for Achusa, said to be one of the beneficiary communities, John Akuma, said that, instead of the free distribution of transformers, officials of the ministry were demanding as much as N1.5 from interested communities for them.

According to Akuma, “We were given assurance by officials of the ministry that our community, Achusa, would benefit from the free transformer as our name was [listed as] number 23 on the list of beneficiaries but when it finally came out, the community’s name was nowhere to be found.

“To make the matters worse, we were later told to contribute about N1.5million before it could be released to us. We later found out that the lists of initial beneficiaries earlier announced to general public was set aside”, he adds.

When confronted with allegations of gratifications, however, Ukaha dismissed the allegations with a wave of the hand saying they were baseless, unfounded and without any iota of truth.

According to him, the ministry had complied with the governor’s instructions in the transformer distribution exercise. “All we are doing is sequel to the governor’s instructions. And we carried other critical stakeholders along. For instance, the secretary to state government, Prof. Tony Ijohor, selected lawmakers and 23 council chairmen, as well as the wife of governor, Eunice Ortom, were also presented with one unit each of the facilities.”

He further maintained that out of the 60 transformers only one was given to “my kinsmen” after sharing to those “mentioned with five currently left in the custody of the ministry”.

On the alleged contributions for the transformer release, the commissioner told Orient Weekend that he was aware some communities were taxing themselves prior to the distribution “but I discouraged them when my attention was drawn to the matter”.

He insisted that he did not receive a dime from any community in respect of the transformer distribution and warned those accusing him of such corrupt practice to desist from making such spurious allegations against him and the ministry.