Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom has asked the Presidency to address the issues he raised in his interview with Channels Television on Wednesday instead of attacking him.
While reacting to a statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, the governor said the Presidency’s accusation that he was fanning the ember of discord among Benue State residents was untrue.
In a statement on Thursday in Makurdi, the Benue State capital, by his Chief Press Secretary (CPS), Terver Akase, he said: “We read the statement by the Presidency in response to Governor Ortom’s recent interview on Channels Television in which he raised a number of concerns bordering on the worsening security situation across the country.
“The tone of the statement shows the quality of Presidency Nigeria currently has. They abandoned the message and went for the messenger…”
“We advise the Presidency to focus on ending the killing of innocent Nigerians, fix the economy, as it promised, and stop the corruption under their watch.
“They can’t run away from their responsibility. They were brought to power to serve the country, not to oppress the people and suppress their freedom of speech. They are on record to have publicly promised during their campaigns before the 2015 elections that they would respect the rights and freedoms of Nigerians, if elected.”
The Presidency had in the statement by Garba, accused the governor of promoting sectarianism and ethnicity with his utterances to cover up his alleged political shortcomings.
It also accused the governor of deliberately escalating the farmers’/herders’ clashes and causing more deaths in the North-central state, and alleged that the Benue Anti-Open Grazing Law was crafted to rob a particular ethnic group in the state of its rights.
According to the statement : “The said Ranches Establishment Law is a ploy to withhold rights and freedom from the targeted ethnic group.”
Ortom, who was a guest on the TV programme on Tuesday morning, had, among others, criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s position on open grazing. The President had approved recommendations of a committee to review 368 old grazing sites across 25 states in the country, “to determine the levels of encroachment.”
The governor had said: “If Mr President respects the law, the Land Use Act gives governors the power to preside over land administration on behalf of the people that they govern.
“So it is amazing and I am surprised to hear this coming from Mr President as if he doesn’t have an Attorney General, or Lawyers around him to advise him. I think Mr President was misquoted or he did it out of error. He should come out to apologise to Nigerians.”
