By Sunday Ani
Leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo has said that President Bola Tinubu’s last week’s visit to Yelwata in Benue State where over 200 villagers were massacred has exposed his shortcoming as a Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the country’s armed forces.
He noted that as the C-in-C, he cannot say that he didn’t have foreknowledge of the killing in Benue because according to him, the things that are happening across the country, especially in Benue and Plateau, where killings have become regular occurrence, should form part of the daily features in the security reports that he receives.
Insisting that President Tinubu is not a good C-in-C, he condemned the politicisation and trivialisation of the Benue massacre during the president’s visit by turning the event into a political rally and carnival.
He said: “What I see is a general pattern where the president politicises everything. If he’s going to commission a road, there’s always this cartoonish aspect that has to do with singing and all of that.
“He goes to the National Assembly in a country where people are suffering and they sing these various anthems that they wax all the time.
“Now, they’ve not gone one step beyond reason by going to a place of mourning, a place of massacre where over 200 people were dastardly killed; such a place is a somber occasion and he’s in charge of all the people who followed him there and what you get there is like another political rally. That sombreness was not there”
He stated that some of the theatres they were doing there with the Chief of Defence Staff giving the president a salute are the things they should have done in the situation room. “I think the president should have gone there as a chief mourner and his language should have been sober. The responses should have been better controlled and he should have made sure that come rain, come shine, he got to the venue of the attack,” he said.
He equally condemned the President’s failure to step into the blood-soaked Yelwata community for whatever reason. “The president should have gone to Yelwata and seen the people. He cannot say as a commander-in-chief that there’s a part of the country that’s unreachable for him. People are living there and he left them there; he is responsible for their welfare there. So, I think the notion that merely going to Benue is enough sacrifice is wrong.
“Some of the commentaries there and his own reaction to it did not do anything to suggest to the people that his priorities are with those who have been killed,” he said.
He also condemned the town hall meeting the president had with the Benue people during the visit, saying, “In that hall which looks like a banquet, the whole setting is not the setting you would find for mourning. The whole staging of it is not sympathetic enough and is not appropriate enough and that is our understanding of it.