By Bemgba Iortyom.
The re-run election for the Benue-South Senatorial seat has been concluded, with former Senate President, David Mark, of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) declared winner over his challenger, Daniel Onjeh running on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In the process, the Idoma historically referred to as ‘Akpotos’, have come out of this election consolidated in their play of politics of benefits cum development, particularly when viewed in comparison to their Tiv neighbours, the ‘Munchis’.
In the run-up to the election, the Munchis expended copious amounts of political energies hoping to foist on the Akpotos a puppet of the Akume political fiefdom, but they probably did not reckon well enough with the political history, nor did they calculate correctly what they were asking their wily neighbours to forfeit in the process.
Have the Akpotos ever gotten it wrong in the game of politics of benefits; hardly.
Flashback to the 1st Republic and the Akpotos are pictured smartly reaping key development milestones such as Telephone, Pipe-borne water, Postal services, etc. while their Munchi neighbours are engaged in a hideous internal strife, burning and slaughtering one another, all in the name of politics.
Fast-forward to the present and the Munchis, having given both their Senate seats, six out of seven House of Reps, and fourteen out of twenty state Assembly seats to the APC, they have quickly turned on one another in a vicious internecine strife attended by petitions and probes deployed now with even more lethal venom than the match-sticks and cutlasses of the 1st Republic.
But the Akpotos on the other hand; with their Senate seat, all four of House of Reps and ten state Assembly seats, given to the PDP, they were still able to wangle into their kitty the sole Ministerial slot given to Benue by a President who promised to reward areas which supported him with votes over those which did not.
And now when the Munchis came calling on the Akpotos to vote into the Senate Akume’s stooge to represent them, as a way of showing appreciation for what the ruling APC has done for them, the Akpotos simply laughed that off, as they re-elected their old and familiar hand to Abuja.
They exhibited once again their sophistication at playing this game of appropriating majority of the benefits in recruitment into the military and para-military establishments of the country, as well as juicy employment at the federal level.
Only a primitive people like the Munchis, who have all along played politics of self-destruction, could expect the Akpotos to exchange the huge benefits encapsulated in the man David Mark, just for the senseless nomenclature of a political party