By Peter Duru, Makurdi

Former Governor of Benue State, Chief Samuel Ortom, has advised his successor, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, to stop playing games with the state’s insecurity.

The immediate past Governor advised in a statement by his Media Aide, Terver Akase, in response to an earlier statement by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, who disparaged the former Governor while responding to statements made on national television by the lawmaker representing Makurdi/Guma Federal Constituency, Mr Dickson Tarkighir who alleged that Governor Alia refused to provide logistics to security agencies and personnel combating armed herders across the state.

Kula, in the statement, said, “Tarkighir falsely claimed that Governor Hyacinth Alia has refused to provide logistics to security agencies and personnel combating armed herdsmen across the state. This is outrightly untrue and deliberately misleading.

“Again, Hon. Tarkighir misrepresented history by suggesting that the previous administration under Governor Samuel Ortom had curtailed the herders attacks more effectively. This claim is factually incorrect. Under Ortom’s watch and by his own admission, Benue State recorded the highest number of internally displaced persons, IDPs, in its history, with over four million people displaced from their ancestral homes. This figure deepens the failure of reactive rhetoric without strategic support for security architecture.”

Reacting, Akase said, “Governor Alia and his appointees are obsessed with the name Samuel Ortom to the extent that even when discourse has nothing to do with the former Governor, they find a way to drag him in.

“As if Benue State is in some contest to determine under whose leadership more people are/were killed, Governor Alia gleefully asserted in his statement that during his time, the number of internally displaced persons has dropped to less than 1.5 million.

“At no point in his two tenures did Governor Ortom claim that Benue had four million IDPs. The Ortom administration engaged in several strategic partnership initiatives that brought expertise and professionalism and promoted proper data collection for effective and efficient coordination and management of IDPs in the state.

“Through these initiatives, the administration developed the Benue State Humanitarian Response Plan and generated empirical and verifiable data on IDPs and Cameroonian refugees through Benue SEMA, in collaboration with and partnership among MDAs, local, national, and international organizations.”

The statement noted that “Governor Alia inherited, accepted, mentioned, and presented the same data of 1.5 million IDPs handed to him by the Ortom administration several times to the media and humanitarian partners at the beginning of his government in 2023. It is indeed the same data and operational structures established by the previous administration that Governor Alia has continued to use to this day.

“Once again, we are left with no choice but to advise Governor Alia and his team to stop playing games in the insecurity situation confronting the state. People are being killed like animals by armed herders. Trying to minimize the magnitude of the attacks by concealing casualty figures and the number of displaced persons and making the attacks appear as mere communal clashes or skirmishes will not help solve the problem.

“Since the killing of innocent Benue people by armed herders intensified under Alia, the Governor has peddled varying narratives regarding the attacks. At one point, he says those on a killing spree in the state are foreigners and not Nigerians. In another instance, he claims the killings are reprisals because, according to him, Benue people rustled Fulani cows and were selling them in wheelbarrows. In yet another case, the Governor blames those he brands as ‘Abuja politicians’ as sponsors of the killings. His latest accusation was against clergymen in the state, whom he tagged as ‘religious bandits.’ This indicates that the Governor either has no clue about the security situation or is deliberately trying to mislead the public.

“We advise the Governor to adopt the security roadmap that President Bola Tinubu crafted for him when the President visited the state. It has been five days since the President visited and made beneficial recommendations on addressing insecurity in the state. Still, the Governor has yet to begin implementing any of the recommendations.

“Only two days ago, hundreds of IDPs camped at the Makurdi International Market protested and chose to leave the camp out of frustration because they felt abandoned by the government.

“We expected that Governor Alia’s press release would address the plight of the IDPs and tell the people what his government has done to alleviate their suffering.

“We recommend that to fight the insecurity ravaging parts of Benue State, the Governor should allow the 23 local governments to take control of their resources to enable them to effectively mobilize security in their domains and also provide development for their people. Fortunately, allocations to the local governments, similar to those of the state government, have increased by 400% since the fuel subsidy was removed by Mr President in 2023, and the Supreme Court gave a landmark judgment granting full financial autonomy for local governments.

“The Governor should obey the Supreme Court judgment and let the councils run their affairs. The 23 local governments have been lamenting; the Benue State House of Assembly has also passed resolutions repeatedly urging Governor Alia to allow local governments to control their resources, but sadly, all such pleas and interventions have fallen on deaf ears. 

“If Governor Alia and his administration are out of their depth in handling the security challenges in the state, they should publicly admit their incapacity and call stakeholders for help as President Tinubu also counseled him recently, rather than throwing canisters at imaginary opponents.”

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