ORTOM: RE-BONDING BENUE STATE MEDICAL STUDENTS

For a Benuephile bloke like me (do I have a choice here? My mother and siblings are interred at Ipollo-Ugboju of the Otukpo local government administrative district), I have been sticking my neck out and hollering about the “ranch” thing ever since I penned a short opinion piece titled “The Fulani Menace” and sent this out to media houses, to the then senator representing my Benue South Senatorial District, who as President of the Senate should confirm from his archives that this is so, to Gov. Samuel Ortom’s predecessor, to the then Speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly, to the federal House of Representatives members from Benue State, to the Benue State delegation to the 2014 National Conference, and to sundry other outlets. On whose original arguments was the then federal government of Goodluck Jonathan convinced to make funds available for a national cattle ranching scheme? Blowing any trumpet here? Non, je ne regret rien.

I’d rather blow a trombone! Funds were released for a worthy idea and cause, why not consult with those from whose intellectual banks these ideas emanated? A few years down the line, “fund-receivers” are getting flaks from the Arewa Establishment and the EFCC, and hapless Tiv farmers are getting slaughtered in Nasarawa State for “killing cows.” How could “billionaire” ex-governors sleep easy in the midst of all this tribulation and adversity? What’s the use of all these “billions” if wayward Fulani killer gangs have fixed gunsights at the back of your head because you are “Tiv man?” If you feel you are secured as a Tiv ex-governor because you are sequestered in Abuja, the Arewaphile EFCC will harangue you until you give up a good chunk of those “billions.” (In all fairness, I should have been consulted on the cattle ranching scheme needed to quench the conflagration of the early episodes of the wrongly-designated “farmers-headers clash” for which my Benue folks were taking a beating when President Goodluck Jonathan approved the N200billion fund to immediately seek ways to stem this “farmers-headers clash” fireball. Ex-governor Gabriel Suswam wouldn’t deny my correspondences on the “cattle ranch” thing to his office, as I am sure ex-President of the Senate, David Mark, will corroborate that this was indeed so. Like I pointed out earlier, whilst helping myself to a line from Edith Piaf’s repertoire, I still hold that, “Non, je ne regret rien.” I was not just going to let the idea of a national cattle ranching project die off in ignominy when this APC government took over in 2015.

Circa 2019, I had prepared a full-bodied proposal document for a segmented national cattle ranching project, a win-win proposition to fix this “farmers-headers clash” and I contacted the business development arm of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the ABU Zaria Consult, to help “market” this idea at the federal level. Why chose the ABU Zaria Consult when I had just recently collaborated with my university’s consultancy outfit, the FUTMIN Ventures, in 2014 to do a novel ozone level pollution study at the major traffic stalling points of the Federal Capital City at Abuja for a contract sum of N50million? The ABU Zaria Consult appealed to me for a most sensible and practical reason. I had no doubt, by 2019, that the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, was the “intellectual powerhouse” of this Muhammadu Buhari’s APC government whilst the Daily Trust media house was the “political-influence machine” of the government, thus by routing my proposal through the ABU Zaria Consult, I’d hoped to be able to argue strongly that the ideas of my proposal needed to be the green light for implementation. After all, the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and the Daily Trust media house were still stuck in the “farmers-headers clash” point-of-view.

I couldn’t pursue the ABU Zaria Consult “thing” any more when Northern Nigeria’s “security turd hit a swirling fan” with highway kidnapping incidents and all. Who wants to fall into the hands of Fulani kidnappers whilst the victim clutched contract-proposal documents that advocate for building sedentary ranching bases for these killer hordes?)
All this while, I’d assumed Gov. Samuel Ortom was having a raw deal at the hands of the Arewaphile, pro-Fulani federal government and he has been getting my sympathies. But Ayuba Wabba of the NLC just indicted Mr. Ortom and this national labour boss mentioned he’d given imprimatur for workers’ strike to “shut Benue down” or some sabre-rattling in that line. Again, we sense the “patapata public-opinion influence” of Professor Farooq Kperogi spurring a recalcitrant and an unwilling pampered Moggy on to spurt what sounded like barks for once in a very long while. I am dismayed that Gov. Ortom has allowed himself to be at the receiving end of the reluctant thrust of Ayuba Wabba’s spear; this could hurt, just so Mr. Wabba wants to make a point and get into Farooq’s “good books.”

The story out of Benue State by concerned stakeholders of that state is that, by annulling the monthly stipend-allowance that medical students enjoyed under ex-governor Gabriel Suswam, Mr. Ortom has inadvertently made it easy for medical graduates of Benue State extraction to think “migration” to the West rather than stay back for the mandatory two-year-period of bond that their monthly stipends will have translated to. Gov. Ortom should know how wretched Benue State is in almost every human-development index other than the open-defecation practice. Thus, incentivising the “tarry-a-while” desirable for Benue State will go a long way to improve rural healthcare delivery, especially. I am saying this before I know a thing or two about the poverty of rural Benue State and I have been fantasising that I’d help my daughter build a rural clinic for quick-fix multipurpose life-threatening surgical needs when she graduates from the BSU post-ASUU strike to compel the federal government to implement our long-overdue salary structure.

I also have a “Plan B Fantasy,” which is, my ex-classmate and ex-roommate at the university, Peter Atselefun, over there at the state of New Jersey stateside should “keep my pikin for mind when she don graduate because she go need sound visa-application recommendations to come US.” Now, since my daughter is not “bonded” at the BSU by the Benue State government, the Plan B, not as a fantasy, appeals to me more. But this should not be so. I care for my rural folks, many of whom will be relieved to have massed-operation low-cost hernia surgeries performed on them for a mere token or not a dime at all for my hope is they’d be NGOs to help my daughter do some good for her people. More than ever before at this moment, Gov. Ortom has a duty to put his critics, the Lauretta Onochies and Garba Shehus, to shame by doing the “needful.”

– Sunday Adole Jonah, Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State