The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Benue State, Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN, has emerged winner of the first online voting exercise conducted by Nigerian Concord Newspaper.

The poll is the first in a series of ten online voting exercises scheduled by the publication.

Other candidates featured in the ballot include Governor Hyacinth Alia of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Matthias Byuan of the Labour Party (LP), Chief Sebastine Hon of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Hon. Herman Hembe of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and Professor Terhemba Shija of the National Democratic Congress.

The voting exercise, which ran from Thursday through Friday morning, was monitored by the newspaper’s editorial team in Lagos State.

A total of 369 participants took part in the poll. However, 28 votes were invalidated due to instances of multiple voting, leaving 341 valid votes.

Of the valid votes cast, Aondoakaa polled 196 votes to defeat his closest rival, Governor Hyacinth Alia, who scored 84 votes. Hon. Herman Hembe secured 29 votes, while Chief Sebastine Hon, Dr. Byuan, and Professor Shija received 14, 10, and 8 votes respectively.

Following the collation of results, the chairman of the Nigerian Concord Newspaper Online Voting Monitoring Team, Prince Olukanye Eleko, declared Aondoakaa the winner, having secured the highest number of valid votes.

The newspaper announced that the next online poll among the six governorship candidates will hold on the 15th of this month.

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Anthony Ehilebo, has expressed concern over the growing insecurity in Nigeria, alleging that some individuals have turned criminal activities into a lucrative enterprise.

Speaking on a political programme aired on News Central on Friday, Ehilebo said the failure to bring perpetrators of major terrorist attacks and kidnappings to justice has contributed to the persistence of insecurity across the country.

According to him, several high-profile incidents, including the abduction of schoolgirls in Borno State and the attack on students in Buni Yadi, did not result in the prosecution of those responsible.

“When Boko Haram kidnapped girls in Borno State, till today we have not found those responsible and held them to account. Buni Yadi happened and nobody was held to account, and it spread to other schools,” he said.

Ehilebo noted that insecurity in Nigeria has evolved into different forms, ranging from terrorism driven by extremist ideology to criminal activities motivated by financial gain.

“There are multiple facets and there is one that is solely domiciled within terrorism. If you look at the literal translation of Boko Haram, it means western education is haram according to radical Islamic teachings,” he stated.

He further alleged that some individuals now engage in kidnapping and related crimes for economic reasons, citing a recent case involving a government aide who was reportedly arrested for allegedly staging her own abduction in an attempt to secure ransom payments.

“It has now become an industry and a commercial venture for some, while for others it has become a religiously driven ideology,” he said.

Ehilebo argued that the persistence of insecurity is largely due to a lack of consequences for perpetrators, stressing that stronger political will is needed to tackle the problem effectively.

“The bottom line that has kept this going is the absence of consequences, which is largely driven by political will,” he added.

By: Aondoakaa Tersugh Daniel | 04/06/2026

Benue State has a political record that deserves more honest attention than it usually receives. Three gubernatorial elections stand out, not because they were routine contests, but because they were fought at moments when the stakes went far beyond who would occupy the Government House in Makurdi. In 2003, the PDP faced down a strong ANPP challenge and won. In 2011, the ACN came with considerable momentum and the PDP held. In 2019, in what remains perhaps the most ideologically charged election the state had seen in years, the PDP defeated the APC under circumstances where the outcome carried a meaning that ordinary ballot arithmetic alone could not capture.

What connects those three victories is not campaign funding or party structure, at least not primarily. What connects them is something the Benue electorate appeared to understand at a gut level at each of those moments: the PDP candidate was, whether perfectly or imperfectly, standing between the state and forces that had no interest in Benue’s survival as a territorial and human reality. Voters did not simply choose a party. They chose a shield. That is a distinction worth sitting with.

The configuration going into 2027 is not new. It is, to a degree that should unsettle anyone paying attention, a near replication of the exact conditions that produced those three victories. And this is where the commentary has to be direct.

The allegation that Governor Hyacinth Iormen Alia received substantial Fulani sponsorship ahead of the 2023 election, on an informal understanding that their settlement on Benue land would be facilitated, remains unproven. No court has established it, and fairness requires that distinction to be stated plainly. But what requires no court is what has been happening in Benue communities under this administration.

Under former Governor Samuel Ortom, the herdsmen attacks were vicious and frequent, but they followed a pattern of strike and retreat. The attackers came, killed, and left. There was no lingering. Under Alia, something in the character of these attacks has changed in a way that is difficult to explain away. Communities are not merely raided anymore. They are emptied. People are not just killed. They are displaced, and then the land they fled is occupied. The attackers are staying. They are settling. And the man whose constitutional duty it is to stop all of this has stood before cameras and described what is happening as mere skirmishes, denying with apparent comfort that genocide is taking place inside his own state. That is not a political disagreement. That is a moral catastrophe delivered in a press statement.

That posture alone recreates the precise condition that pushed Benue voters toward the PDP in every previous difficult election: a leading candidate whose relationship with the enemies of Benue territory was, at the very best, one of suspicious ease.

Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa SAN enters this race carrying two arguments simultaneously, and both of them are strong. The first is the territorial argument just described. The second is less dramatic but equally felt by ordinary people: the Benue civil service is in a state of near collapse. The bureaucracy is paralysed and the basic machinery of governance is grinding rather than running. This political argument that does not need embellishment.

The arithmetic of Benue political history points in one direction. Every time the conditions aligned to make the PDP the obvious defender of Benue interests against external threat or internal abandonment, the PDP won. The conditions in 2027 are not merely similar to those moments. They are, in critical respects, starker. The administrative failure is not a campaign claim. It is four years of lived reality. The state’s indifference to mass killings and occupation is not a rumour. It is documented in satellite images, funeral photographs, and the testimonies of the displaced.

The PDP does not need to invent a crisis to campaign on. The crisis is already governing the state. And if the Benue pattern holds, and this particular pattern has not broken once in the three elections that mattered most, then 2027 may not be the party’s most gruelling fight. It may, quietly and almost without precedent, be its most straightforward one.