According to Governor Samuel Ortom, the president’s attempt to distort the killings in Benue State is regrettable and repugnant. He charged that the federal government, which is run by President Muhammadu Buhari, did not safeguard residents of Benue.
Ortom made these comments in response to claims made by Garba Shehu, the president’s media aide, that the governor had politicized insecurity in his state and allowed the crisis to worsen.
Shehu claimed that while the Buhari administration had already taken a number of measures to address the killings in Benue, more progress could have been made if Ortom’s administration had cooperated.
However, Ortom claimed in a statement released by his spokesman Nathaniel Ikyur that the statement from the presidency had once more proved his contention that the killings and mass murder carried out in Benue by the Fulani militia had the full support of the Buhari administration.
The governor claimed that he had repeatedly pleaded with the Buhari administration to intervene in the herders’ militias’ relentless invasion of Benue State and characterized the claim as a careless attempt by genocide perpetrators to shift the blame to the victims.
The president’s attempt to make fun of him over losing his senatorial seat and the PDP’s governorship, he continued, had strengthened the perception that the state’s extensive deployment of security personnel for the elections was conceived and executed in the presidential villa under the watchful eye of APC agents.
