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From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Presidency has accused Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, of politicising insecurity at a time when people of the state were busy burying their dead.
In a statement, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, accused the governor of obstinately disregarding multiple security reports sent to him by security authorities in the country.
Shehu said the governor, instead opted to attribute all acts of violence in the state to the Fulanis.
Shehu agreed with the statement of the Governor-elect, Father Hyacinth Alia, that he would be inheriting a state currently in Intensive Care Unit (ICT).
The presidential spokesman, who was responding to editorials published in some national dailies, alleged that there was deliberate attempt to lay the blame of the dire security situation in Benue State entirely at the feet of the outgoing president.
“The people of Benue State know the truth. After all, it is they who have suffered under Ortom’s “leadership” – if one can call it such. It is they who have experienced first-hand the mass killings, the torture, the litany of atrocities as Benue’s security situation plummeted ever further. It is they who buried their loved ones while watching their careless, irresponsible and incompetent governor politicise on those freshly dug graves.
“And it is they who turned to the last privilege they had left: their democratic privilege, to resoundingly kick out Ortom and his so-called Peoples Democratic Party in favour of a new governor, Reverend Father Hyacinth Iornem Alia from Buhari’s party, the APC.”
Shehu said the President initiated several measures to stem the security situation in the state, but alleged that such were roundly ignored.
Those interventions by the President, according to him, included a number of in-person meetings with the Governor of Benue State and other community leaders, assuring them of the Federal Government’s commitment to protecting farmers and communities; establishment and funding of Joint Security Operations, code-named Operation Whirl Stroke (OWS).
“Instead, Ortom stubbornly refused to engage with the detailed, holistic approach clearly spelt out by the Federal Government. He arrogantly chose his own, destructive path. He blamed the Fulani for every problem that arose. He ignored numerous intelligence reports passed to him for action. He rejected police findings into investigations that didn’t meet his egotistical worldview. He politicized every life lost on his watch. So, thank God the people of Benue rejected him so roundly at elections. His contract was not renewed. He failed a Senate election. Even the person he endorsed for Governorship was rejected.
“They know better than anyone else the true reasons for the situation in Benue. If anyone is looking for someone to blame, just ask the people of Benue,” he said.
