WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com | justme4justice@yahoo.com
The attack on the Nigeria Defense Academy (NDA) some days ago was uncalled for and represents an attack on the very soul of the country. But much more worrisome and disturbing to the country than the heartless and gruesome act of the perpetrators, whoever they are, is the immediate uncouth responses of many unpatriotic Nigerians who chose to derive some excitement from the fact that the heart of the country’s security apparatus was assaulted.
This unpatriotic act, as worrisome as it may appear, isn’t unexpected in a nation where leadership unfits and political failures of the rank of Ortom of Benue state are permanently on the lookout for insecurity incidents to lap on to cover their mediocre performance of the last six years; and have groomed followership who see mishaps in the country as windows to attack perceived enemies. How could a state governor descend so low to look away searching solutions to the problem of the country he belongs to and the state he governs would remain unfathomable for sane and patriotic individuals. How a sitting governor would sit on kegs of insecurity explosives, and yet be embroiled with the conscious struggles to stay on political campaign that produces a singular outcome; the consolidation of his stranglehold on the state, at a very costly expense of not just the state but the entire country, would remain a mystery for ages.
It is absolutely unfortunate that our citizens would commit the costly errors of aiding elements like Ortom to become governor of a state and assume power they have no intention of using for the public good, but for personal aggrandizements. In a federation like ours, a state governor should in the least recognise that he, as the chief security officer of the state he governs, holds the responsibility of coordinating available resources to prescribe solution or reprisal at the least to insecurity in his state. Unfortunately, while Ortom was well aware of the antecedents and history of insecurity of the state he was elected to govern, he opted to use the same to project himself and his political dynasty, concocting unfounded, fake narrative of the insecurity in the state that draws sympathy to non-state issues while at the same time deepening insecurity in the state.
It is very unfortunate that in the corridors of power, we couldn’t have the assemblage of truth-speaking aides but sycophants who spurn non-performance on and speak and write only to eulogise their aberrant principals. The likes of Ortom would have been a bit better if they had had access to a few sessions of truth and reality that are absolutely out of reach to them due to fame, money and relevant-seeking wingmen. A butterfly wouldn’t have thought itself a bird if it had access to an advice that reveals its true identity. Those who egg on Ortom; those who tell him he is doing well by abandoning his responsibility, hiding under the cloak of Fulani-orchestrated insecurity in a state that has been for the last decades struggling with the incessant insecurity premised on farmers-herders and Tiv-Jukuns clashes to milk the state dry of its already meager resources in the guise of expending non-accountable security votes, are more potent enemies of the state, its people and the country at large than the apology of a governor they serve.
It stands against all common and rational sense, how Ortom would have the audacity to compare himself with the President of the country; a governor who is undeniably the most underperforming governor in this dispensation, anchoring a state embroiled in a perennial insecurity that he has made no genuine attempt to address beyond frequently pointing accusing finger to the office and person of the President because he saw that as a means to cover up his non-performance; a governor who cannot till now after six years at the saddle of power of his state point to a worthwhile project or service delivery as dividend of democracy for his people. A governor who prides himself as the speaker and mouth-piece of the masses on the backbone of fake propaganda and propagations of fictitious fulanisation and islamisation rhetoric they fabricated to push their political relevance; a governor, whose only semblance of public good in the last six years was the construction of a local government councilor worth of a bore hole, that was celebrated with fanfare.
I really pity the people of Benue state as Ortom has taken them backward away from consciousness of democratic development to a new era of indigenous enmity.
The presidency would not accord the non-performing governor the publicity he seeks by wanting to sit in the same room with the President discussing Nigeria; lions are not found romancing with cats. For the President and his presidency, the volume of the achievements in the last six years speaks loud enough for all non-deaf elements of the society to hear. It is only the physically blind – (apologies to them) – and the politically desired blind, that is, haters of good works who would not see or choose to not see the well-spread infrastructural and social welfare projects of the current administration, evenly spread across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.
It would not serve the purpose of providing an answer to Ortom and his blinded supporters who are comfortable with their principal insulting and abusing the President of their country as the only achievement of being their governor; to go through the rigor of listing President Buhari’s achievements as the president of Nigeria since 2015, across sectors, sections and states of the country. Of course, in their usual characteristic, they would downplay these achievements with the rhetoric “who needs these developments when the Fulani would soon kill everyone.”
However, for record purpose and the sake of the sane population of Benue state who will be saddled with the responsibility of ridding the state of nuisance in 2023, I will supply them with but a few of the President-led projects in the state in exchange for any other of the messiah-posturing governor outside the well celebrated commissioned borehole water.
Under the nose of Ortom, the presidency embarked on the construction of a federal housing scheme at Genabe, Markudi; created a social work programme that has engaged 1000 persons per local government including the governor’s local government; the construction of the federal medical annex center in Katsina-ala and other places; the construction of a 100-bed mother and child health center at David Mark by-pass, Markudi; the establishment of federal university of Health Science Otukpo, Federal College of Education and Federal Polytechnic Wannabe; the rehabilitation of the River Katsina-ala Bridge; the construction of Yandev-Markudi road; the multi-billion naira erosion control construction through Achusa and Markudi; the construction of Markudi-Naka-Adoka road; and the upgrading of Zaki Biam Yam market in Ukum local government to an international yam market. This is not inclusive of the list of the tens of thousands of Benue citizens that benefited from the administration’s social investment programs that include N-Power and Covid-19 loans.
Perhaps, what Ortom would fling at the people of his state and followership on social media who are enjoying his outburst against the President Buhari-led federal government are the cries of teachers in the state that he has refused to pay salaries to in the last few months, and the state pensioners who are groaning under the burden of his administration’s refusal to pay them over the months. Eventually, it might still boil down to Orthom’s rhetoric of Fulani-herdsmen that is withholding the state from performing its financial responsibility to its workforce.
When sanity finally returns to the governor’s many blindfolded followers, if it’s not already too late and they have not sent him to retirement in the Senate, they would want perhaps, the answer to the simple question: “why only Benue; why is Nasarawa, Kogi and other immediate neighbouring states not complaining and attacking the way Ortom is doing?
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