Gov Ortom reports Buhari to US over insecurity, threat to life

Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, has reported President Muhammadu Buhari to the American government over the insecurity in his state and the constant threat to his life by security agencies.

Ortom who is currently in the USA, while interacting with officials of the State Department in Washington DC, also called on the US government and the international community to hold the Buhari-led administration accountable for the spate of violence in Nigeria and should anything happen to him because of his opposition to the government.

In a statement on Sunday by Ortom’s Senior Special Assistant on Diaspora Affairs, Peters Ichull, the Governor said he was forced to cry out over his safety because of a series of threats he had been receiving and the attempt made on his life in March last year, which all pointed to the fact that the Presidency and its conspirators were after him.

Ortom pointed out that he was in the US State Department to “present the traumatized Nigerian victims’ side of the story” after discovering that wrong narratives were being circulated across the globe by the Nigerian government to shield itself from complicity.

“In the last seven years, the Buhari administration has seen children rendered as orphans, farmers being displaced, schools, hospitals and social services disrupted, without doing anything to restore normalcy,” part of the statement reads.

“The federal government’s punitive neglect has led to an increasing number of internally displaced persons in Benue State which now stands at 1.5 million.

Read also: Nigerians have become slaves under Buhari —Benue Gov Ortom

“I am calling on the government of the USA and the rest of the international community to demand accountability from Buhari’s government for the deaths of innocent citizens. Doing so would be the right step to ending the spate of violence in Nigeria, especially in Benue State.

“I appeal to the US to encourage the establishment of state police, appoint a special envoy to Nigeria to deal with the flashpoint of the violence and ensure that international funding of IDPs gets to Benue State, the epicentre of the current violence as well as Plateau, Kaduna, Niger, Zamfara and other states affected by terrorists’ attacks in the country.

“The false narratives by government officials of herder-farmer clashes are deliberately crafted to delay farmers’ doomsday until they are gradually wiped out and their ancestral lands confiscated.

“The truth is that farming populations in Nigeria are under siege and are being decimated; agriculture is gradually dying and food security is being threatened,” he added.

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