By Aare Abiodun Oluwarotimi
I have read that long press statement by some faceless people who claimed to be members of the People’s Democratic Party across the twenty three local governments in Benue state.
In their long but watery statement which source can easily be traced, they are calling for the suspension of Chief Samuel Ortom PhD, the immediate past governor of the state from the party he helped to revive from comma in 2018. Yes, the party was in comma till Ortom came back and gave it a life.
What is Ortom’s sin to them? He didn’t support the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the last general election. I feel the pains that Atiku lost too but have they critically looked into the reason behind his actions?
Let’s quickly talk about the sacked national chairman of the party, Senator Iyorchia Ayu as one of the reasons for Ortom’s action. Ayu was the problem the PDP had during that time. If not, how would he make a promise in the public and turned round and failed to honour his words? You have forgotten?
Immediately after the national convention of the PDP that produced Ayu as the national chairman, the former Senate president made a clear public pronouncement that he would resign from the post immediately the party produced a Northern presidential candidate. Of course, Ayu never wanted Atiku as that candidate hence he easily made that promise which landed the party into the trouble it had before , during and after the 2023 general elections.
In case you don’t know, it was Chief Samuel Ortom PhD that made the emergence of Ayu as the national chairman of the party possible despite all odds. Didn’t that same Ortom have the right to ask Ayu to step aside when a Northern presidential candidate emerged for the party? If he had the right, then there was nothing wrong in Ortom’s action.
As a national chairman of a party, you are supposed to be neutral and keep the supports you have for your preferred candidate to your heart at all times. In the case of Ayu, the reverse was the case. He visited Aminu Tambuwal, former Sokoto state governor and a Presidential aspirant of the PDP the day after the presidential primaries and described him as “the hero of our convention”. That was too bad..
For Alhaji Atiku, I was his supporter and worked for him despite that people like Chief Ortom were angry that he didn’t make Ayu step aside as the PDP national chairman. Let’s quickly ask ourselves what it would have costed Alhaji Atiku if he forced Ayu to step down and allowed the party to nominate a Southerner national chairman in acting capacity. Of course, it would cost him nothing. Was that not what Ortom was fighting for?
Come to Titus Uba whom the writers of the press statement accused Ortom of not helping during the election which he lost to Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia. Is their allegation on that not watery and full of lies?
To the best of my knowledge, Samuel Ortom campaigned for Uba more than how he campaigned for himself as Zone B Senatorial candidate. We will bring you details on this soon.
For other candidates whom defeats were blamed on Ortom by the writers of the press statement, I will say that we should siddon dey look. If Ortom worked against them, why didn’t that same Ortom work against Abba Moro and the rest that were able to win their own elections as PDP flag bearers? We won’t talk much on this.
That they are using a faceless group to call for Ortom’s suspension from PDP is because they are jittery and afraid of the former governor’s silence on critical issues since after the general elections.
On the portion where they said the former governor didn’t perform very well as governor, we won’t say a word now. We shall publish all the achievements of Chief Samuel Ortom PhD in few days from now..
To be continued !!!! Aare Abiodun Oluwarotimi, De Oracular Oracle that eats jollof rice in the Shrine.