Chairman/CEO of Dialogue Group of Companies, Mahdi Shehu has condemned Benue State Governor, North Central Nigeria, Samuel Ortom, over his comment declaring he will not support a ‘Fulani President’ in reference to Atiku Abubakar the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)’s Presidential Candidate.
Gatekeepers News reports that Ortom made the statement on Sunday when he hosted his colleagues from Rivers, Oyo, Abia and Enugu to a dinner party held at the government house in Markurdi.
“To hell with Atiku and anyone supporting him. They should go and tell him. You want me to be a slave to Fulani. It’s better I die. Anybody supporting Atiku is an enemy,” he said while alleging that his people are being killed and brutalised by Fulanis in a bid to frustrate his administration.
In his reaction to Ortom’s remarks, Mahdi during an interview on Politics HQ, a News Central political programme said it was wrong for Ortom to generalise that the Fulani tribe is responsible for the breakdown of law and order and insecurity issues in Benue State, noting that there is ‘a linear relationship between the failure of governance and security issue’.
“When there are security challenges facing a Nation or State dumping the entire blame on a group,” he said in an interview on Tuesday, stressing that the Benue Governor “can’t transfer his degree of failure (referring to salaries, healthcare, education)” which according to him, directly and indirectly, contributed to insecurity, on a certain ethnic group.
Mahdi noted that there are six other ethnic groups outside Tiv in Benue State. “Ortom cannot claim to be speaking for them,” he said.
Asked why the PDP has been silent on Ortom’s statement which can be classified as ‘anti-party activity’, Mahdi responded: “For me, there is no point suspending or dismissing Ortom from PDP. He has already dismissed himself out of PDP.”
He continued: “He (Ortom) is an old man in confusion, under an illusion. An old man who is facing mental derailment that requires a lot of prayers in the Church and a lot of psychiatric intervention or help.”
When asked if Atiku, his preferred candidate is also fit to be President considering his age in the circumstance, Mahdi defended him saying, “Atiku is mentally and physically alert.”
Mahdi further called for a ‘personality audit’ of politicians while responding to a question on when he thinks Nigerian politicians would become more civil and respond to issues with facts and data to benefit the electorate.
In his word: ” It will only happen when we begin personality audit and when we begin to identify people who are credible, responsible…” otherwise, politicians “will hide under the umbrella of religion, and tribe to perpetuate life scale fraud.
“Sadly, the more you steal, the more you are celebrated in your own country.”
