BENUE: Your utterances unbecoming of governor, Ortom hits back at Mohammed

GOVERNOR Samuel Orton has replied his counterpart from Bauch State, Bala Mohammed, for faulting his style of handling the farmer-herder clashes in his state.

Orton, who expressed shock over the utterances of Mohammed, said the governor was a disappointment.

Mohammed had berated Southwest governors for handling the farmers-herders crisis poorly, saying that Ortom started the whole thing.

“On the herders-farmers clashes, you have seen what our colleagues in the South-West are doing and some of them in South-East. Some of us told them with all modesty and humility – you are wrong.

“But the person that is most wrong is the Governor of Benue State, my brother and my colleague, Governor Ortom; he started all these. If you don’t accommodate other tribes we are also accommodating your tribes in Bauchi and other places.

“We have so many Tiv people working and farming in Alkaleri, farming in Tafawa Balewa, farming in Bogoro Local Government Area of Bauchi; has anyone asked them to go? We have not, because it is their constitutional right to be there.

“We have Yoruba people in Bauchi for over 150 years, even before the birth of Nigeria. Nobody has told them to go; some of them have risen to become permanent secretaries in Gombe, Bauchi, and Borno,” Mohammed had said.

But replying Mohammed, Ortom said his comments were disappointing, stressing that he found the comments made by the Bauchi governor shocking. Ortom added that as a governor who took oath of office to protect and defend the constitution of Nigeria, Mohammed ought to know better.

Ortom, in a statement, said Mohammed had now taken the lead in violating the constitution by his unbecoming utterances.

The Benue governor said he was shocked when Mohammed defended Fulani herdsmen bearing AK-47, wondering which section of the constitution gave the right to Fulani herdsmen to carry dangerous weapons around the country.

“It was the same Governor Mohammed who once said on national television that a Fulani man is a global citizen and therefore does not need a visa to come to Nigeria and that the forests belong to herdsmen,” said Ortom.

Ortom said it was clear that Mohammed did not know the enormity of the havoc being wreaked by Fulani herdsmen across the country, saying if he had, he would not be using emotion to defend illegality.

He also told Mohammed that Benue indigenes living in Bauchi are peace-loving and do not carry arms like the Fulanis in other places, adding that his government had not driven away law-abiding Fulanis in his domain