Weep not for Ortom

Benue state governor, Samuel Ortom, has attracted public sympathy over his persecution by the presidency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and his erstwhile party, the All Progressive Congress. Some weeks before his official defection, his party, the All Progressives Congress, through its national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, made spirited attempts to prevail on the governor to remain in the party. However, the moment the governor announced his defection to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the music changed. First, Oshiomhole declared the governor a failure and said he was relieved the governor left.
“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.
Immediately after, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) remembered he had laundered over N22 billion of the states’ funds and said he was under investigation. The EFCC also went a step further by freezing five bank accounts belonging to the Benue state government. Also at the same time, eight renegade members of the Benue State House of Assembly quickly began impeachment proceedings against the governor for corruption and gross misconduct, ostensibly with the aid of Policemen deployed with ‘orders from above,’ to cordon off the state assembly, chase out all workers and prevent the other twenty-two members of the house from gaining entry into the assembly complex.
Such was the level of persecution that even the fiery nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, took sides with the embattled governor, going to the extent of writing him and urging him to remain resilient and undeterred in the face of persecution. The nobel laureate largely agreed that the avalanche of attacks are because of the governor’s political choices. “Coincidences are, by their very nature, suspect, and I certainly perceive the beginnings of a heavy-handed campaign of reprisals from ruling circles over your political decision”, Soyinka said.
True, Ortom has come under coordinated attack for daring to dump the party. But the reality is more nuanced. Just as Adam’s Oshiomhole claimed, “Ortom got the party’s ticket on a platter of gold,” had been a total failure as a governor and the party and the presidency was only tolerating him because he belonged to the ruling party. The moment he left, he became a legitimate target – and for good reasons.
Samuel Ortom was a minister under the Goodluck Jonathan administration. He contested the governorship ticket in his then party, the PDP, and lost to the then governor’s candidate. Desperate to actualise his ambition, he ran to the former governor and leader of the APC in the state who used his influence to hand over the APC ticket to him ahead of leading contenders like Emmanuel Jime, Steve Ugba, and Joseph Waku even when the party’s primary election has been conducted although it was inconclusive. Ortom was not handed the party ticket based on the impressiveness of his manifesto or campaign promises. The sole consideration was his willingness to be loyal to the party leader and godfather, George Akume.
For so long as Ortom was loyal to Akume and by extension, the presidency, there was absolutely no problem. The federal allocation would come, it will be shared between the owners of the state, as recent revelations show, and all was well, even when workers salaries were not been paid. Bailout funds and Paris Club refunds will also go the same way. On a visit to the state in December 2017 a secondary school teacher told me that since December 2016, he has not received a penny from the government in form of salary or allowance. As at the last time I checked, workers are still being owed more than eight months salary arrears and primary and secondary school teachers and local government workers about fourteen months salary arrears. This is not to talk about pensions that the state has completely stopped paying.
The inability to pay salaries in a state that is mostly comprised of civil servants and their dependants had cost the governor a lot of goodwill. He had not only become unpopular in the state, he was also being publicly insulted and pilloried openly by traditional and religious leaders for failure to pay worker’s salary. For instance, on December 27, 2017, a Catholic priest in Tarka, Fr Ashwe, rudely stopped the governor, Samuel Ortom, from addressing the congregation at the thanksgiving Mass to mark the 64th birthday celebration of his godfather, Senator George Akume at St Christopher’s church Wannune, Tarka local government area of the state. According to reports, Senator Akume had addressed the congregation at the thanksgiving and after he finished, he handed the microphone over to the governor, who obviously wanted to address the congregation and explain to the people why he had been unable to pay salaries. But the priest interrupted and stopped the governor from saying anything asking him to wait until they get to the reception venue where he could lie to the people about salary issues and other matters as much as he wanted. The priest said he would not allow Ortom to stand in God’s house to deceive the people again.
Then the herdsmen attack on the state escalated the relationship could no longer hold. Sensing an opportunity to win local support and against the president’s unwillingness to stop the killings and even siding with the killers, Ortom, a hitherto staunch Buhari supporter and leader of governor’s urging the president to seek a second term, quickly changed sides and became the champion of his people even if he did nothing with the huge security votes he was drawing from the federation account to mobilise security agencies to stop the killings in the state. He rather became very critical of the federal government’s lackadaisical attitude towards the killings while carefully presenting himself as a helpless state governor with no powers to do anything.
“This is a federation. Our responsibility is not to enforce the law. It is the responsibility of the federal government. So all that we can do is to alert them; and to be proactive and give them information. That as much I did. Today, we are still calling on them. The killings are still going on and action is not being taken to stop the killings. These herdsmen are known. But for whatever reason, they have immunity against the constitution of the federal Republic of Nigeria. Today they are going about with arms and killing and no single person has been arrested with the arms. That is my query with the federal government,” he was quoted as saying in one of his numerous visits to one of the IDP camps in the state.
But when accused by the EFCC of embezzling N22 billion from the state coffers, the governor’s defence was that he used the money to mobilise security agencies to stop the killings in the state.
Although he was neither the initiator of the anti open grazing bill and of the ‘Public Mass Burial’ for the victims of the New Year eve’s attack, he went along with them even in the face of severe pressure from the federal government and from his godfather to cancel the event. That event signalled the beginning of the end for him in APC. By the time he decamped to the PDP, the APC in Benue state has become deeply unpopular with the people who see it as a party controlled by their oppressors.
The only problem now is that while Ortom shared the state’s resources with the APC bigwigs in the state he will be prosecuted alone for the mismanagement of the state’s resources.

Christopher Akor