The Benue State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Solomon Iorpev, has promised to draw the attention of the state governor, Hyacinth Alia, to the rot in some of the parastatals and agencies under the ministry for urgent attention.
The commissioner gave the assurance during his visit to the State Printing House, State Radio, State Library, State Television Station and the Arts Council.
Iorpev said his visit to the agencies and parastatals under his ministry was a fact-finding mission to assess their challenges and determine how to attract the governor’s attention to them.
He said, ‘My tour of the agencies and parastatals under my ministry is to acquaint myself with the challenges and how to tackle them.
‘I’m hoping to give His Excellency, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, the first-hand report about the challenges in all the agencies and parastatals.
‘I intend to raise a memo to his office and constantly remind him that something needs to be done here. Before His Excellency ends his administration after eight years, we would have seen big results.’
The commissioner said he had waded into the issue of staff welfare, adding that he was sure steps had been taken towards addressing them.
Some members of staff in most of the agencies had complained about infrastructure decay, shortage of manpower, non-confirmation of casual staff, lack of work tools and materials, and poor funding.
At the Benue State Library, the commissioner observed that while the structure was solidly built to serve as a custodian of books and reference materials, it had been left to deteriorate badly.
There were similar scenarios at other agencies, with projects at the Arts Council abandoned for over 40 years amid an acute manpower shortage.
The State Radio, known as ‘Radio Benue’, is currently off the airwaves, largely due to electricity challenges and a lack of work tools.
At Benue Television, the Director-General, Mr Martins Shanyo, lamented that the station had struggled to transmit and warned that it might soon go off air completely if urgent attention was not given to it.
The Printing House was filled with non-functional machines, broken ceilings, cracked walls, bushy surroundings and dusty, abandoned office equipment.
The state-owned newspaper, known as ‘The Voice’, has been partially off the newsstands due to a lack of newsprint and faulty machines.