PDP Crisis: My Problem With Atiku Is Personal – Ortom

Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom has revealed that he has a personal beef with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.

The governor told reporters on Thursday that the former Vice President had turned a blind eye to the sufferings and plight of the people of Benue at the hands of Fulani herdsmen.

Ortom stated that Atiku’s comments on the Benue killings at the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) dialogue in Kaduna State last year were offensive to him.

Because politics is a game of interests, he asserted that the safety and well-being of the people of Benue state are his interest and driving force.

The governor argued that any candidate whose interests conflict with those of the people of Benue cannot have his or the state’s support.

He claimed that injustice, undemocratic practices, and another attempt to deny him a second term ticket due to his firm stance in defense of the Benue people’s security drove him to abandon the APC and retain his seat as governor under the PDP.

He said;

Apart from the G5, I’ve have personal issues with the presidential candidate of our party.

He has turned a blind eye on the sufferings and the plight of my people who elected me. I have cried for more than six years about the carnage, the frustration I have, the terrorist activities of Fulani herdsmen, only for our candidate to go to Kaduna and say that he is a Fulani man,  so, I should not complain when they are killing my people? This is unfair to me.

So, for me, there are options in politics. I can decide to sit back and also turn a blind eye and not do anything at all.

I can decide on the day of voting to go and vote for somebody I think that can bring succur to me and my people. I can do that. So, but we have to be strategic.

It’s not that we’re stuck. We know what to do. At the end, if the leadership or party is not able to come out with strategies that we also help to bring us back into the fold, we can decide to say okay, let everybody go and do the election according to the election. So, that is it.