By joshua 
An Open Letter to Governor Hyacinth Alia
Your Excellency,
Human society rests on a simple moral truth: leadership is a sacred trust. In ethics, we are taught that a leader who sees suffering and chooses silence has already violated the very duty that gives authority its meaning. The philosopher Aristotle wrote that the highest virtue of leadership is courage, while Immanuel Kant argued that moral responsibility cannot bend before convenience or fear. When a leader fails in these basic moral obligations, he does not just disappoint his people, he wounds the soul of the society he swore to guide.
Your recent statement at the NHRC consultative forum, where you boldly declared that there is no religious, ethnic, racial or state related genocide in Benue, has left many Nigerians in shock. At a time when thousands of your people remain in Internally Displaced Persons camps, when entire communities have been erased, when families continue to mourn their dead and when your own Bishop is crying out and pleading for help, you stand before the world and deny their suffering.
Your predecessor, Samuel Ortom, had the courage to speak the truth even when it threatened his political comfort. That is what ethical leadership demands. You, on the other hand, have chosen denial. You have chosen political convenience over moral duty. You have chosen silence when your people needed your voice.
I am convinced that the church will not restore you to your priestly faculty after your tenure as governor. What a wicked man you have chosen to become, and what a shameless priest you have shown yourself to be. While your people bleed, you speak in defense of what is killing them. The cassock hid your character, but politics has exposed you.
A man who abandons his sacred duty for political games has already lost the moral right to wear the cassock he once claimed to honor. By this public statement in support of evil against your own people, you have soiled your hands with blood. You cannot stand on the altar to celebrate the holy mass with clean conscience. No amount of politicking will return you to office for a second time. Your reelection is already in the dust bin. These are the consequences of choosing political expediency over the truth.
Your Excellency, let conscience guide you back to the reason you were elected. Let your people remind you of the sacred duty you once embraced. And if your pride will not let you correct your path, then at least bury your head in shame for failing the very people you vowed to protect.
History will not remember how polished your speeches were. It will remember whether you stood with your people when they were in danger.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher Sunday
Kogi State Polytechnic, Lokoja.