Says govs aids involve in Benue killings
ABUJA-NATIONAL Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, yesterday alleged that some aids of governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State were involved in the killing spree which occurred in Benue state recently including the killing of Rev.Father.
He said the National leadership of the party was relieved with the defection of the governor to PDP, explaining that it was due to the governor’s alleged failure to pay salaries, infrastructural development that made the leadership of the APC in the state to say they were going to deny him a second term ticket due to the fear that the party will lose if Ortom is supported for a second term.
Oshiomhole who addressed journalists yesterday narrated: Over the past 48 hours we have been watching with keen interest development in Benue state in particular reference to the decision by Ortom to return to PDP. Ordinarily we would not make any further comment, the first is that as you all recall, the governor had said that the APC in Benue state had given him red card to leave our party and that they will not filed him in the forthcoming governorship election and because the door had been shut against him he had no choice than to leave.
“We invited him to speak to us on the issues, we also invited the leaders of our party in party state to also brief us on the issues. From the point on view of our leaders in Benue state their point was clear that they do not believe that fielding Ortom on APC platform in 2019 election can only lead to electoral defeat for a number of reasons.
“They reminded us that inspite of the allocation accrued to Benue state, inspite of the bailout funds amounting to over N20billion that he has received in two installments each N10billion, in addition to the huge sum of money that Benue state collected from the Paris Club refund, governor Ortom has not paid salaries to Benue workers as at when due, including teachers, Local government employees and others. He is owing some of them as much as 12months salaries, some 15 months.
“So the entire economy of Benue state that survived largely on civil servant’s salaries Is to that extent compromised. So these elements alone substantially explained a vicious circle of poverty in Benue state that have been deepen under governor Ortom.
“The second is that they drew our attention to the fact that governor Ortom has complicated by his own actions and poor judgment the security situation in Benue state and they drew our attention to the fact that some of the people arrested as a result of the killings in Benue state were people who have been associated with governor Ortom including people who have been in his employment. Including a guy who was known to have been involved in Boko Haram activities and who he knowingly recruited to manage Forestry Guide.
“These people as we speak have been arrested and they are in police custody. And for any man of honour, if an appointee of a governor is involved in heinous crime including killings that will be enough for a governor to worry about, instead governor Ortom played up the ethnic dimension of criminality whereas in truth some of those who have been killed were killed not by Muslims but Christians of Benue state origin including those he had employed.
“So his attempt to explain away criminality by playing up ethnic divide is unhelpful to what he should do as governor to manage the situation better. Governor Ortom’s predecessors including Suswan, had found ways to manage these diversities. So Ortoms incapacity to manage it and to try to make political capital out of the deaths of Benue people is most unfortunate. Because I believe that even in politics there should be a level of morality.
“It is important that Nigerians understand that the condemnable killings of two Rev.Fathers and some Christians in a church, those who have confessed to these crimes, including people who had worked with governor Ortom and these killings were done few weeks after this Rev. Father in a church sermon was strictly critical of the style of governance under Governor Ortom. And his price obviously, was to pay his dear life.
“For us the shock is that, I am not about to suggest that governor Ortom asked anyone to go and kill but that those involved in these killings, some of them are people of Benue state origin and they are Christians but that is not to deny that some herdsmen are not involved in some of them. But the responsibility of any governor is not to manipulate the truth but to confront it squarely.
“The third issue our leaders pointed out in Benue was that fir three and half years that Ortom has been in office, he cannot point out to any concrete project that he has carried out in Benue. He cannot point to any road that he has commissioned. When the APC leaders asked him this question that whereas the Vice President and the President had gone to some states to commission projects, but in Benue they only came to pay condolence visit because there are no projects on ground. When they asked him he said he spent it on security.
“I am relieved that Ortom has returned to where he came from and the club he actually belongs to. A club whose primary philosophy is share the money not develop communities. So we now have a clean platform to look and search for a credible Benue citizen that can provide the kind of leadership that the great people of Benue state deserve not someone that seems to make political capital out of human graves, celebrating the death of his own people.
“As a party we condemn any life that have been wasted by criminals whether in Benue state or any other part of Nigeria. And we accept that government’s irreducible minimum responsibility must be to protect life and protect. But I condemn any one of us at any level of government who seeks to make political; capital out of the killings because the we have the shared responsibility to secure the lives of Nigerians regardless of their religion and their social status” he stated.