.

…Says grazing route ploy to grab land for Fulani

By Steve Oko

The Coalition of South East Youth Leaders, COSEYL, has carpeted Presidential Spokesman, Garba Shehu over his verbal attack on Gov. Samuel Ortom of Benue State.

COSEYL said that Ortom’s opposition against President Muhamnadu Buhari’s directive to recover grazing routes was in tandem with the aspirations of his people, hence the governor did not deserve any insults on vilification as done by Shehu.

“Ortom is the voice of the voiceless, champion and defender of the common man and should be left alone. Let reason and logic counter his lines of argument, not some ad hominem and unappealing mudslinging”.

The coalition in a press release by its President-General Goodluck Ibem and Secretary-General Kanice Igwe, cautioned the Presidential Spokesman against disparaging the office of the governor.

COSEYL which voiced its strong support for the governor’s position said that the grazing route was an alleged plot by President Buhari to snatch people’s ancestral land and hand it over to his Fulani kinsmen.

The group said that “no attempt to restore grazing route which is obsolete” would succeed, adding that no part of Southern Nigeria or the Middle Belt will be used as a grazing route.

COSEYL also said that the presidential directive to recover grazing routes was “part of the ploy to actualise Fulanisation and Islamisation agenda”.

The group lampooned Shehu for blaming Ortom for the “ongoing genocidal attacks by Fulani herdsmen against Benue people” instead of blaming the murderous herders.

” We have read Garba Shehu’s article of shame where the Mallam belaboured the point trying to exonerate the presidency and heaped the blame for deaths of poor Benue citizens on Ortom without even a mere mention of the killer herdsmen!

“A man like Garba Shehu who claims Ortom is the cause of the deaths of poor people of Benue State should have done better than indulge in cheap blackmail and politics of false hope.

“The deaths, as the records show, are occasioned for the most part by some murderous Fulani herders who are all at large.

” Garba Shehu, just like The Presidency, knows that the security architecture of a federation like Nigeria rests squarely on the President and that governors like Ortom do not call the shots.

” What has the President or the presidency done to address the killings and sacking of settled farming communities by migrant nomadic herdsmen other than to come up with such policies like tracing the national ‘grazing routes’, ‘cattle colony’ and even the ten-year National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) all which focused primarily on the herders leaving the farmers out in the multi-billion naira largesse?

“Where has it happened that farmers got recompense after their crops and lands were destroyed by herders? Is this unity by Shehu’s standard?”

COSEYL said that Shehu resorted to attacking Ortom instead of addressing the issues he raised.

“Shehu’s release failed to render inferior the allegations Ortom made and at best dwelled on a non-issue. If indeed Ortom is an ‘unstable character’ whose ‘political fortune is sinking’, then Shehu’s government peopled and manned by hangers-on, political defectors and deserters count as one. Did Buhari begin politics with the APC of today?

“If Ortom is today no longer allowed access to the Villa, Shehu should tell us why and not resorting to blame games.

“Garba Shehu should be asking himself if it was for sectarian politics that Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Southern Governors Forum (SGF), civil society groups and other stakeholders in the Nigerian project are speaking up concerning unpopular policies of the day or whether it was Governor Ortom who led the US government into tagging Nigeria as a country where Christians are persecuted.

“What did Shehu’s government do when Bishop Kukah released a homily calling on the government to do better and has that government gone after Gumi who doubles as backchannel or spokesperson of the bandits?

“We wish Buhari-led government well as we have nothing against men like Shehu other than the truth. Buhari’s record will outlive him, and this is where history will capture in volumes men like Shehu.

“The failings and failures of the government in which Shehu serves are as clear as day given the happenings of the day. The worst is it doesn’t get better with recent politics of Petroleum Industry Bill which is stoking embers of agitation; Electoral Amendment Bill which nearly killed electoral advancement the electoral commission sought to achieve. Should Shehu deny these fallouts, we know then that the problem too is not beyond him.

“Nothing, we say, is polarising the nation other than the government of the day in which Shehu serves. Shehu’s problem should have been how to ensure that Nigeria doesn’t become the next Afghanistan under the government he serves.”

Vanguard News Nigeria