All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate in Benue State, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, has declared his sojourn in partisan politics as motivated by the compelling need to liberate the people from incompetent leadership, unconscionable looting of public funds, poverty and economic backwardness.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja, at the weekend, the cleric lamented that despite Benue’s natural endowment as the Food Basket of the Nation, it remained largely “economically-handicapped, humanly underdeveloped and socially-sterile with majority of the population in poverty.”

Alia, in a statement by his Media Adviser, Ado Mohammed, regretted that most of the ruling elite in the state disregarded the plight of the governed and failed to harness the enormous natural and human resources of the state for the benefit of the citizenry.

The cleric said he had put together a “bold and comprehensive plan of action to reinvigorate key areas of the state’s local economy, to spur economic growth, productivity and prosperity as well as improve the standard of living for ordinary Benue citizens.”

According to him, the APC campaign manifesto and development blueprint will be unveiled immediately the stipulated time for electioneering by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) begins.

His words: “I have always believed that a sustained comprehensive growth and technological advancement of the nation is partly hinged on equitable distribution of prosperity and improved standard of living of the people”.

The key ingredients he identified for economic development and national transformation include agricultural transformation and food security, education, communication technology, industrialisation and commerce, rural development, human and social development, security, tourism and environmental management.

The APC candidate regretted that as the global leader with 70 per cent share of global production of yam and cassava, Nigeria had yet to be recognised as an exporter of the products, but it trails behind Ghana, which is responsible for 75 per cent of all yam exports from Africa.

“Of the 60 million tonnes of yam produced yearly by Nigeria, which comes majorly from Benue, only 200 tonnes are exported and 30 per cent of this meagre figure rots in transit due to poor preservation. Hence both farmers and exporters count their losses rather than gains at the end of each farming season,” he lamented.