By Amos Aar
THE Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom Wednesday distanced himself from the military operation in Nasarawa State Tuesday, January 24, 2023 which reportedly claimed the lives of some alleged terrorists, revealing that the operation was ordered from the defense headquarters, Abuja and not him as is being widely speculated.
Governor Ortom made the disclaimer Wednesday at Government House, Makurdi during a stakeholders’ summit organised by the National Population Commission (NPC) on the 2023 population and housing census.
Ortom said President Muhammadu Buhari gave the order for terrorists to be eliminated hence the military operation in Nasarawa State. He said although Benue people live in Nasarawa and the two states have shared boundary, he however cannot just go into Nasarawa State and begin to do things without his counterpart’s consent.
“I did my investigation and I was told that the military operation in Nasarawa State yesterday was from Defence Headquarters. The governor [of Nasarawa state] is aware, the Commissioner of Police in Nasarawa State is aware and the security agencies there are aware and nobody sought my consent. But today, this same people from the APC are saying that I was responsible. This is politics taken too far,” Ortom said in response to an allegation made at a press conference by Benue State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) that he was the one who ordered the killing of the alleged terrorists in Nasarawa State.
“It was military operation from Defence Headquarters and Mr President has given directives to security agencies to do away with terrorists. So why blame me here? If some people are terrorists and they went to Nasarawa as I’m told, because I am told that they killed some people who are from Benue here. Some people from Benue who were discovered there were brought here. So, they went and told lies that it was me,” Ortom said.
But in the text of the said press conference by leadership of the Benue APC on January 24, 2023, accessed by National Record, the party rather accused Governor Ortom of allegedly directing the Benue State Livestock Guards and the Benue State Community Volunteer Guards to rustle cows belonging to Fulani herdsmen “under the guise of enforcing Open Grazing Prohibition Law”, the act which the APC said provoked the herdsmen militia to kill innocent Benue indigenes in retaliation.
APC also called on Governor Ortom to “immediately implement the General Atom Kpera committee’s recommendation of 2014 for peace to reign in Benue State between herders and farmers”.
The APC further recommended among other things, that under whatever circumstances, if cows must be arrested, “Governor Ortom should instantly provide a wall of defense for the innocent villagers to protect them from the reprisal attacks of the herders”.
In a counter press conference addressed at Government House, Makurdi, the Special Adviser to Governor Samuel Ortom on Media and Publicity, Mr Terver Akase, however said the APC was bent on repealing the Anti-Open Grazing Law and they also wanted to divert public attention from the “removal” of their gubernatorial candidate, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia, following the nullification of the party’s governorship primaries by the Court of Appeal.
Fielding questions from newsmen, Akase maintained that “the law has come to stay.” He said the “Livestock Guards are not armed to attack people, their job is to enforce the law and when they have breaches of the law, they impound the animals and take them to the quarantine centre where people come to claim them”.
Akase argued that the herders are not coming to Benue for grazing of their cows but to take over the state, insisting that the livestock guards were not the reason for attacks but occupation of the land.
“When they carried out simultaneous attacks on Benue in 2018 on the eve of New Year, was the livestock guards’ organisation in place? Benue was attacked 26 times before the law was enacted to bring about the livestock guards, so who was inviting the armed herders’ attacks? So, it has nothing to do with livestock guards. Do we have livestock guards in Southern Kaduna where communities have been sacked and people killed?” Akase asked.
Asked why the livestock guards always go for the cows instead of herders, the Media Adviser said, when the livestock guards go to arrest the herders grazing their cattle on people’s farms, the herders run away, leaving their cows behind and that’s why the guards usually impound the cows “but when the cows are impounded, the herders also come. Don’t forget too, that more than four hundred (400) violators of that law, whether they are cow rustlers or herders have been arrested and tried,” he added.
