Nigerian politician and the current national chairman of the All Progressive Congress, Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, has said that the Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, is a failure and he is glad he let APC. According to Oshiomhole, Ortom left the party because he could not account for the funds which accrued to the state under his leadership.
“I am relieved as national chairman, and I believe that the leadership of the party in Benue is also relieved that Ortom has left the party and returned to the club he belongs,” Mr Oshiomhole said in an interview with journalists on Friday. The first is that as you all recall, Gov. Ortom had said the APC in Benue state had given him red card to leave our party and that they would not field him in the forthcoming governorship election in 2019 and because the door had been shut against him, he had no choice than to leave. Without going into investigations, we invited him to speak to us on the issues. We also invited our leaders of our party in Benue state to also brief us on what the issues were.
“From the point of view of our leaders in Benue state, their position was clear that they believed that fielding Gov. Ortom on the APC platform in the 2019 election could only lead to electoral defeat for a number of reasons. They reminded us that in spite of the allocations accruing to Benue state and in spite of the bail out funds amounting to over N20 billion that they had received in two instalments of N10 billion each and in addition to the huge sums of money that Benue state collected from the Paris Club Refund, Gov. Ortom has not, and is not paying salaries to Benue workers as and when due, including teachers, local government employees and the state civil servants. He is owing some of them as much as 12 months salary, some more than 16 months and so the entire economy of Benue state that survives largely on civil servants salaries is to that extent compromised,” Oshiomhole said.
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