Ortom Hits Back At Benue Govt’s Displacement Claims

Former governor of Benue State Samuel Ortom has debunked what he described as misleading information by the Benue State Government, which claims that the number of people displaced during his time was more than those displaced now, saying “I am not in any displacement competition with the present government.”

The media aide to former Governor Ortom, Terver Akase said Governor Hyacinth Alia and his appointees are obsessed with the name Samuel Ortom to the extent that even when a discourse has nothing to do with the former governor, they find a way to drag him in.

“We read a statement issued by the Benue State governor, Hyacinth Alia, through his chief Press Secretary, in which the Governor, while responding to the member representing Makurdi/Guma Federal Constituency, Rt. Hon. Dickson Tarkighir, dedicated a large part of the statement to unprovoked vituperation against the immediate past Governor of the State, Chief Samuel Ortom”

However, the CPS Kula in his response to Tarkighir described his media outing where he was praising the immediate past Governor Ortom’s fight against insecurity as a misrepresented history that the immediate past administration had curtailed the herders’ attacks more effectively.

According to him, this claim is factually incorrect. Under Ortom’s watch and by his own admission, Benue State recorded the highest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in its history, with over 4million people displaced from their ancestral homes. This figure, he said, showed the failure of reactive rhetoric without strategic support for security architecture.

He said, “In contrast, despite fresh waves of terrorism, Governor Alia’s pragmatic interventions and collaborations have seen that number drop to less than 1.5 million today. Even with the resurgence of violence, the state has not returned to the alarming figures recorded during Ortom’s era.”

Kula maintained that it is absurd and disappointing that Tarkighir is making a subtle call on Governor Alia to adopt the same security tactics deployed by the past administration, which unfortunately, escalated the IDPs crisis in the state.

Ortom, however, said  Benue State is not in any contest to determine under whose leadership more people were killed as Governor Alia gleefully asserted in his statement that during his time, the number of internally displaced persons has dropped to less than 1.5 million.

He said, “We advise the Governor to adopt the security roadmap that President Bola Tinubu personally crafted for him when the President visited the state. It has been five days since the President visited and made very useful recommendations on addressing insecurity in the state, but the Governor has apparently yet to begin implementing any of the recommendations.

” At  no point in his two tenures did Governor Ortom claim that Benue had four million IDPs. The Ortom administration engaged in several strategic partnership initiatives that brought expertise, professionalism, and promoted proper data collection for effective and efficient coordination and management of IDPs in the state.

“Through these initiatives, the administration developed the Benue State Humanitarian Response Plan and generated empirical and verifiable data on IDPs and Cameroonian refugees through Benue SEMA, in collaboration  and partnership among MDAs, local, national, and international organisations”