Presidency places cows above Nigerians’ lives – Ortom

Former Governor Samuel Ortom

Presidency places cows above Nigerians’ lives – Ortom

Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, yesterday, claimed the repeated attacks and killings in the state by suspected Fulani militia had the full backing and endorsement of President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government.

Ortom who accused the presidency of placing cows above human lives, alleged the Buhari-administration was after him because of the anti-grazing law in the state.

He stated this in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Nathaniel Ikyur, while reacting to an earlier statement by the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu accusing him of politicizing security in Benue while his kinsmen bury their dead.

“The Presidency has shown in this recent public statement that they have placed cows above human lives and made the animals to urinate on the graves of those they massacred in Benue and elsewhere across the country. If not, they wouldn’t have gone to town to mock the slain in their graves. It is an insult on Benue people including those killed and butchered children, the maimed, raped and abused women and the over two million people living under squalid conditions in Nigeria’s largest Internally Displaced Camps in the state.The Presidency’s statement is a reckless stab by agents of genocide against the Benue people by blaming the victims.”

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Ortom said Garba’s statement was a clear indictment on Buhari as Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces for abdicating his constitutional duty of providing security to Benue State and other parts of the country and blaming him a state governor, who had no control over the country’s security agencies.

He said it was common knowledge that as the Commander-in-Chief, Buhari has failed woefully in securing Nigeria, and Benue state in particular even as he has empowered and emboldened Fulani pastoralists in their expansionist agenda, including the killings of innocent persons across the country.

He claimed that besides unleashing Fulani killers on Benue people, the Buhari government had denied Benue State any meaningful project in the last eight years, including the repair of Federal Government roads in the state, which have been turned into death traps.

Part of the statement read: “Shehu Garba’s infantile statement on the security situation in Benue State has once again confirmed our position that the killings; mass murder in Benue by the Fulani militia has the full endorsement of the Buhari government. It also goes to confirm that the Presidential spokesman does not only speak for Buhari but for some terrorists Fulani groups too. It shows how much he and others in that league have misled the government and Nigerian people in the last inglorious eight years.”

“Governor Samuel Ortom has repeatedly pleaded with the Buhari government to intervene in the incessant invasion of Benue State by Fulani militias. The President sadly chooses to endorse the invasion and merely asks our people to learn to accommodate their neighbours who derive pleasure in killing and dispossessing them of their ancestral lands