Nigerian Concord Newspaper
A Benue-born public affairs analyst, Barnabas Agashua
Professor Moses Ochonu’s essay contains a valid criticism of Governor Hyacinth Alia’s handling of public communication on insecurity, particularly the governor’s tendency to downplay insecurity.
However, his attempt to place former Governor Samuel Ortom in the same category as Governor Alia rests on assumptions that do not stand up against the historical records.
To reduce Governor Ortom’s eight-year dogged fight against terrorism to mere “wailing” is to ignore one of the most sustained state-level security responses ever undertaken by any Nigerian governor confronted with an insurgency beyond his constitutional control.
The first flaw in Professor Ochonu’s argument is the suggestion that Ortom merely talked without acting.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
When the Federal Government controlled the military, police, intelligence agencies and every conventional instrument of internal security, Governor Ortom explored virtually every constitutional avenue available to a state governor.
His administration enacted the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law in 2017, providing Benue with the first comprehensive legal framework against the violent occupation of ancestral lands through open grazing. That law remains one of the most significant legislative responses to the mindless invasion and killing of innocent people by armed herders in any part of Nigeria.
Beyond legislation, Ortom did not leave security entirely in the hands of Abuja.
He established the Benue State Livestock Guards to enforce the anti-open grazing law. More importantly, towards the end of his administration, he established Community Volunteer Guards recruited from virtually every kindred across Benue State through consultations with conventional security agencies, traditional rulers who actually nominated the volunteer guards, community leaders and other stakeholders. Because these volunteers came from their own communities, they possessed intimate knowledge of the terrain and local dynamics, making intelligence gathering faster, more accurate and more effective.
He also supported and funded the operations of Agro Rangers unit of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in the state. Agro Rangers are specialized troops deployed to protect rural farming communities, secure agro-allied investments, and mediate conflicts between farmers and herders. During the inauguration of the Rangers in February 2020, Governor Ortom donated several Toyota Hilux patrol vans to boost the unit’s operational reach.
That community-based security architecture significantly improved surveillance, early warning and coordination with conventional security agencies.
Governor Ortom also procured and distributed operational vehicles and logistics to the military, police, DSS and other security agencies to strengthen their operational capacity.
These were not media performances. They were concrete security interventions.
To dismiss all those measures as “impotent opportunism” is to erase verifiable facts from Benue’s recent history.
Professor Ochonu also overlooks an equally important fact: by the time Governor Ortom left office in May 2023, insecurity had been reduced to its lowest level in years.
Many communities that had previously experienced repeated attacks had witnessed relative stability because of the synergy among conventional security agencies, the Livestock Guards and the Community Volunteer Guards.
That security framework did not eliminate every attack, but it substantially degraded the operational freedom of criminal elements.
The unfortunate resurgence of widespread attacks after 2023 has itself raised legitimate questions about what became of those structures and why they were not sustained with the same commitment.
Professor Ochonu further characterizes Ortom’s consistent advocacy as “noisemaking.”
That description is unfair.
When thousands of innocent citizens are being murdered, displaced and dispossessed, silence is not leadership.
Speaking consistently about genocide, displacement and terrorism is not political opportunism. It is moral responsibility.
Indeed, history has repeatedly shown that many humanitarian crises become worse precisely because leaders choose silence over advocacy.
Governor Ortom took Benue’s case to the Presidency, the National Assembly, international organizations, foreign governments, the diplomatic community and global media. He insisted that the killings should neither be normalized nor hidden.
Today, virtually everyone agrees that Benue’s tragedy deserves national and international attention.
That awareness did not emerge by accident. It was built through relentless advocacy.
Professor Ochonu equally argues that Ortom only embraced the anti-open grazing law after falling out with the APC.
That interpretation ignores the legislative process itself.
The law was debated, passed by the Benue State House of Assembly and signed after extensive consultations with stakeholders across the state between 2016 and 2017 when Ortom was still a governor on the platform of APC. Once enacted, Governor Ortom defended the law consistently despite enormous political pressure, sustained attacks and repeated attempts to force its repeal.
Leadership should ultimately be judged not by speculative motives but by public decisions and the courage to stand by them.
On this score, Ortom never retreated.
Most surprisingly, Professor Ochonu claims that Ortom “did not do much to either stop the killings or help the displaced people.”
That assertion overlooks years of humanitarian interventions undertaken under extraordinarily difficult fiscal circumstances.
The Ortom administration consistently provided support to internally displaced persons, collaborated with humanitarian agencies, maintained IDP camps and repeatedly sought federal intervention for affected communities. The resources available to Benue were obviously insufficient for a crisis of that magnitude, but to suggest that nothing was done is historically inaccurate.
Governor Ortom also addressed other daunting challenges facing the state. With lean resources, he was able to pay salaries, pensions and gratuities. Despite that, he was able to pay 91 out of 96 months in eight years. He also executed numerous projects in education, health, infrastructure and other sectors in Zones A, B and C parts of the state. The evidence is there on ground. If Ochonu is not able to visit the areas where the legacy projects are located, he can access the reports of the projects commissioning online via YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.
Perhaps the strongest evidence against Professor Ochonu’s thesis is his own admission that Benue people overwhelmingly re-elected Ortom in 2019.
He attributes that victory almost entirely to political exploitation of insecurity.
Another explanation is far more plausible.
Benue people witnessed a governor who refused to abandon them, who gave legal backing to the defence of their ancestral lands, who strengthened community security structures, who mobilized local and international attention to their suffering, who equipped security agencies within the limits of state powers, and who remained unwavering despite enormous political costs.
That is not merely symbolism.
That is leadership under constitutional constraints.
One may legitimately debate whether Governor Ortom could have done more.
Every administration can always do more.
But history should never confuse advocacy with opportunism, nor erase genuine institutional reforms simply because they did not produce total security.
Ochonu is right that Governor Alia’s denial of insecurity is dangerous.
Where he is mistaken is in suggesting that Governor Ortom’s response amounted to little more than political theatre.
The historical record tells a different story.
And history, ultimately, should be written from facts, not impressions.
* Agashua is a public affairs analyst.