Nigerian Concord Newspaper
A Benue State Governorship aspirant, Mr. Terwase Orbunde has come under intense heat and media attacks for saying that he has the power to stop killings and insecurity in the state within his first 100 days in office as governor as advocacy groups are asking him to explain his secret relationship and pacts with the Miyetti Allah group when he was eyeing the governorship seat in 2022.
Recall that Orbunde who was the Chief of Staff to former Governor Samuel Ortom made this boast at a recent interactive session with the Kwande Intermediate Area Inter party Governorship Advocacy Committee and other stakeholders.
But reacting to the development, Benue Intelligence Watch in a telephone interview yesterday stated that there was no iota of truth in Orbunde’s claim about insecurity, noting that he should rather beg for forgiveness over the pact he signed in 2022 with Miyetti Allah group to repeal the Anti Open Grazing Law of they could find his election to be governor.
The commandant of the advocacy group, Comrade John Semaka who spoke to the newspaper in a telephone chat said that the former Chief of Staff was only making mockery of victims of insecurity by his political statement that he would stop the killings within one hundred days.
The group asked Orbunde to make known his efforts to support the government which he served prominently for over seven years as a Chief of Staff in stopping insecurity in the state.
According to the group, Orbunde was the one that was secretly selling the same administration to its enemies within the federal government led by late Muhammad Buhari at the time the former governor was preventing fulani herdsmen from taking over Benue’s land.
The group also accused him of building an agreement with the Miyetti Allah group for them to support and fund us Governorship ambition in 2022.
His words: “We have records on how Orbunde was always going to Abuja to meet leaders of the Miyetti Allah group for support and funds to enable him become governor of Benue State in 2022.
“He actually related with a cousin and one close associate of the late Buhari in Abuja around 2021 when he started nursing his ambition to be governor in 2023. At the meeting, Orbunde told them that he would repeal the Anti Open Grazing Law which was put in place by the then governor, Chief Samuel Ortom, PhD, if they (Miyetti Allah) could support him to be governor in 2023.
“If he thinks that our claim is not true, he should challenge us and we shall provide evidence of all the financial supports which he got directly from the leaders of Miyetti Allah group in Abuja.
“Orbunde was going to repeal the law which was put in place by Ortom to protect the people of Benue State if he was able to get to the Government House. The sponsors of the Miyetti Allah group saw him as the closest person to Chief Samuel Ortom, and they believed that he knew more about how the former governor was blocking fulani herdsmen from accessing Benue lands”
The advocacy group also asked the public to ask Orbunde who is now making political statements up and down that he would curb insecurity within 100 days in office to explain why he signed a pact with Miyetti Allah that he would cede any part of Benue lands which they wanted to them.