Benue govt replies Garba Shehu, says APC govt created banditry

Benue State Government has accused the APC-led government of creating banditry.

Addressing newsmen in Makurdi on Friday, the State Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Michael Inalegwu levelled the allegation while reacting to the statement made by Garba Shehu, the Special Assistant on Media to  President Muhammad Buhari where he attacked Governor Samuel Ortom over his interview on Arise Television.

Inalegwu alleged that one of the governors in the APC-led government had confessed how they imported bandits from neighbouring countries during the 2015 general elections.

He said that the country since then has not known peace, lamenting that the presidency has not done anything to curb the activities of banditry in the country.

Inalegwu said, “It is amazing that the President SSA in his rejoinder did not make any reference to security in spite of facts and figures reeled out by the governor to prove the despicable deterioration of the security situation in the country and Benue State.

“APC blames others for the problem that they have either not solved or have themselves created which is wrong. Since Governor Samuel Ortom assumed leadership of the state, he has been solving problems and not creating any.

“The people that created problems for Nigerians are Mallam Shehu’s principal and other persons working with him, one of the governors from the north disclosed that the bandits were brought in from neighbouring countries to help them in the 2023 elections.

Contrary to Garba Shehu’s submission that Ortom belongs to politicians who always offer excuses, Inalegwu said that Ortom was the first governor who proffered a solution to the herders/farmers crisis with the enactment of anti-open grazing law.

He said that the law which is the best global practice had been embraced by other state governors, noting that thousands of people have been gruesomely murdered in the state by the marauding herders before the law.

“For statistical reasons, I must point out that before Governor Ortom brought the herdsmen crisis to an end with the enactment of the anti-open grazing law, Agatu local government alone lost over 3,920 persons to the various herders’ attacks on our villages.

“I will make available the village by village statistics of the killings. That is just one Local Government Area alone. And somebody will sit in Abuja to question why the Governor is crying daily.

“This is outside those killed, maimed, raped and sacked from their ancestral homes in 20 other LGAs of the state,” Inalegwu submitted.

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