In this piece, Dr. Tivlumun Nyitse, Bingham University Mass Communications academic, a former Permanent Secretary, Government House to the Benue State Government disagrees with Senator George Akume’s massive Press Conference against Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom last Monday. So far, supporters of Ortom are more battle ready than Akume’s. Perhaps, Akume’s media troops are in a delayed strategy mood. Read on!
Dr Nyitse
I have just read your (Intervention)’s take on the Ortom/Akume face-off and distilled your analysis while waiting to keep an appointment and I have a quick take on what is unfolding. My main take is that Akume has got so many issues wrong and muddled up in an attempt to either please his patron(s) or simply demonise his one-time protégé.
His resort to abusive language rather than address the issues exposes his lack of grip of the substantial content of the Ortom eruptions: Fulanisation, neglect by the Federal Government of the IDP social chaos which have clinically been tied rightly or wrongly tied to the perception that the people’s land is what the Fulani Jihadists are all out to grab added to religious dichotomy which the people are passionately against. How much salary was Ortom owing when he was in the APC and what was Akume’s attitude to that as the godfather and how much is Ortom owing now that he’s in the PDP? Akume has not provided answers to this and any attempt to do so will be a practical indictment of his mentorship capacity and or style. And for Akume to say that the Livestock Guards are being used to hunt political opponents is trite especially when placed side by side with the Anti Grazing law and the wanton killings being perpetrated by these “unknown” gunmen. Remember that on the eve of the 2019 general elections, Akume declared that it was the Tiv people that were killing themselves! This was probably the case that sealed his spirited attempt to return to the senate for the fourth time.
I find the call for the EFCC to probe Ortom puerile as I am sure he knows that Ortom is protected, for now, by the constitutional immunity clause that he presently enjoys as a sitting governor. Of course, Ortom is in the hold of records that showed Akume violated the state treasury to the time of N2billion just before he packed out of the Makurdi Government House in 2007.
Akume has also failed to grasp the reality now that Ortom has succeeded in ingraining himself on the national consciousness as defender of minority rights and not just of the Benue Valley. So any attempt to bring Ortom down will be roundly repudiated by these groups of people. Ortom is literarily worshiped by the people of Plateau State as they see him as understanding the issues involving the minorities of the North Central Nigeria which their governor has proved incapable of. On the whole, Akume lacks the moral and political entitlement to do what he’s doing if not just to please the people at Aso Rock.
Why did he fall out with Gabriel Suswam two years into Suswam’s first tenure? Was Suswam too fighting or to use his words insulting the then president? When has Akume realized that the use of intemperate language to criticize the actions of a sitting president is a crime? His record in this regard during the Obasanjo presidency shows to the contrary. The underlying issues were not far from not being allowed to control or determine who gets what from the resources coming into the till.
For now, Akume has succeeded in making Ortom more popular in the state and a hero of the Nigerian people who perceive the Buhari Government of pursing a ‘Fulanization’ agenda.
