By Preach Ojukwu
1. Hyacinth Alia is an interesting study in education, ordination and the limits of both.
2. He spent roughly 13 years in seminary formation.
3. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1990, 36 years ago.
4. He studied Religious Education, Psychology and Counselling at Fordham University, then Biomedical Ethics at Duquesne University, eventually earning a doctorate.
5. That is an impressive amount of education for one human being.
6. Theology taught him morality.
7. Psychology taught him human behaviour.
8. Counselling taught him empathy.
9. Biomedical ethics taught him dignity and autonomy.
10. The priesthood gave him more than three decades to preach humility, tolerance and love of neighbour.
11. Then politics arrived with the final examination.
12. In 2022, Alia bought the APC’s ₦50 million governorship form despite repeated admonitions from his bishop.
13. The Catholic Diocese of Gboko suspended him from public ministry because canon law ordinarily prohibits priests from exercising partisan political power. Alia continued. He won.
14.There is an irony here.
15. Benue had already produced another priest-governor, Fr Moses Adasu, in 1992.
16. Adasu famously said he entered politics to “baptise politics.” His government established Benue State University before Abacha’s 1993 coup removed him. Adasu later returned to priestly ministry.
17. So returning to the cassock after political power is not unprecedented.
18. Yet today, Peter Obi enters Benue and his convoy is blocked by suspected thugs.
19. Obi alleges political sponsorship; Alia’s government denies involvement. That allegation remains disputed.
20. But the spectacle itself raises the question.
21. What exactly did all those years of education produce if political opposition still generates this kind of hostility?
22. A degree can educate the brain.
Ordination can consecrate a priest.
Neither can manufacture character.
23. And perhaps that is the cruelest lesson of Alia’s political story: you can spend decades studying ethics and still arrive at the doors of political power only to discover that tolerance was the examination you never prepared for.
Preach Ojukwu first published this article on X via@TrendfusionNG
