Nigerian Concord Newspaper
Prof Pita Agbese, I decided to take a look at the volume of your Facebook posts in the last six years and discovered that within those years, you wrote no fewer than 600 articles at a ridiculous average of two articles per week with each piece containing at least 400 words amounting to more than 240,000 words that you penned in six years, out of which you mentioned the immediate past Governor of Benue State, Chief Samuel Ortom in derogatory terms over 70,000 times.
That’s the height of your obsession with His Excellency Ortom’s name. But in all of those loathness-laden and freakish articles, you did not proffer any solutions to development challenges. It’s all bile, all insults, all condemnation, all cynicism and destruction propelled by ethnic antipathy only hiding behind the hood of criticism. This trajectory of your lopsided hate campaign sadly has not stopped with Samuel Ortom. It has continued with the present Governor and Speaker of the State House of Assembly. You couch your attacks in the embroidery of feigned rectitude which attempts to conceal your real divisive tribal motives. Expectedly, only a few unsuspecting fellows applaud you.
I know you are not a busy man. You have a lot of time on your hands, being the reason you make posts on social media approximately every day repeating the familiar beats like a broken record. In your idleness, you have deployed all antics to be heard, albeit without any tangible benefits to Benue State.
I read your post yesterday in which you claimed that I offered to make you the head of the state economic team, if I had become governor. You must be kidding. If I ever had such a conversation with you, it was only on a sarcastic note. How would I have appointed an ethnic champion, a man who has no workable ideas on development; a man who only hoists a gloomy banner of our state to lead its economic team? Please come off such thoughts. Must have been some pun from me intended to make fun of your inert tirades.
You are about the only professor living abroad who has not contributed anything to the development of his state back home. Every season, Nigerian academics in the diaspora send volumes of books and other materials to tertiary institutions in their respective states, but there is no such record of your contribution even to the polytechnic and university located in your area.
All that we see you post on a daily basis aside from anti-Ortom philippic write-ups are pictures of different meals (see attached photos) leaving many to wonder if after several years of learning abroad, all you could offer are photo albums of meals on display in assorted dishes.
Talking about Agila, your country home; what have you done to impact on the lives of the people of that community? Who says development can only come from the government? How many youths of Agila have you assisted to attain their dreams in education, entrepreneurship and other fields of life?
One expects that as a man who is well into his 70s, you should be building blocks of friendships and cohesion, not destroying the fabrics that unite us. You ought to consider yourself as an elder who should serve as a bastion of good morals, not a sectarian bigot whose only mission is to pull down those he hates with venom.
Let me conclude by advising you that rather than solely pursuing your sectional agenda, I encourage you to channel your energy towards proposing viable solutions and engaging in meaningful dialogue with leaders of Benue State to drive positive change.
Remember, criticism is most effective when accompanied by solutions and a genuine desire to see progress and development. By adopting a more constructive and collaborative approach, you can make a difference in the lives of the people and serve as a positive role model for the youth.
I hope that you will heed this piece of advice and take steps to amend your ways for the good of our state, professor.
Terver Akase, Media Aide to former governor Samuel Ortom writes from Makurdi