Ortom’s Hometown, PDP and 2023

EDIFYING ELUCIDATION BY OKEY IKECHUKWU

Two issues are of major concern to us here today. The first is the continuous displacement of middle Belt Communities by marauders, who are wiping them out and occupying their lands; and Governor Samuel Ortom’s refusal to keep quiet and watch the progressive annihilation of his people. The second issue is the shameless public self-diminution of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), months after its controversial presidential primaries. There may seem to be no direct connection between the two issues, but there is.

The argument about the return of cattle routes in a developed Nigeria, which President Buhari reportedly told Ortom is the only solution to the farmer – herder conflict, can be likened to the insistence, by Atiku and his supporters, that the only solution to the PDP’s lingering crisis lies in the provisions of the party’s constitution. The party’s stupidity in not building broad-based consensus for electoral victory is so self-evident, that its fate in the coming elections is more or less sealed.

The Ortom Dilemma

Governor Ortom recently flagged off his state’s vigilante response to the menace of herders and bandits. On that occasion he said that he had no choice but to take such measures as would, in his judgment and the collective judgment of his people, guarantee them greater security than the Federal Government was offering at the moment. He pushed his narratives with simple, commonsense logic; often accompanying everything with rhetorical questions about the survival of disparate groups within a culturally heterogenous society. He is a man pained by problems he believes can be solved easily, but which are allowed to fester for no good reasons.

Even among those who have sometimes disagreed with Ortom on specific issues, none has ever said that he did not understand what the man was saying at any point in time. It is because he has been saying a lot since he became governor that we should all now, independently, examine some of the “claims” he has been making about happenings in his state and among his people before and since he became governor.

I speak of claims here not because he is not telling the truth, but because it is best that some of the specific things he has been saying should be reviewed afresh, and then subjected to further objective evaluation by anyone who cares to do so. It is in this way that many more Nigerians will understand the seriousness of what he has been saying for a long time now and amplify his points.

We should ask, for instance, whether it is true that several communities have been wiped out in his state and that their lands have been taken over by invaders who are living there to this day. We should ask whether the communities in question have names, with details of the number of people killed and farmlands taken over. We should also ask if it is true that the governor’s own hometown, and his personal residence there, went up in smoke and that he really cannot “go home” now and spend a night there if he wished to.

Is it true that it is only about five local governments in the state that are not occupied by invading Fulanis?  If the answers to the above questions boil down to “Yes, it is true”, then we have a real problem. Acknowledgement of that real problem should lead us to the next question, namely: “What is the governor doing about all of this, and what has he been doing all the while?

Well, the man has been doing a lot; apparently to no avail. Ortom has spoken publicly about how he took these issues up “personally and one-on-one” with President Muhammadu Buhari. On the unbelievable decimation of his people and despoliation of their lands, Ortom says Mr. President advised them to learn to live peacefully with their neighbours. Their neighbours? Surely, a community that has been living in a place for over a hundred years should be in a better position than anyone else to say “This is my neighbour, this is an invader and not a neighbour”. But no! Not from what Ortom told Nigerians that he heard from Aso Rock.

On the matter of the menace of herders, Ortom once reported to Nigerians that the president’s direct response to him was that the only solution was to restore the ancient cattle routes. Cattle routes? Through whose village, farmland or university that have arisen in the ensuing decades all over the country? Mr. President was said to have even told Ortom that itinerant cattle and the nomadic life are some of the strongest defining elements of the culture and tradition of the Fulani, which must not be denied them today. Thus, that they won’t be a menace to anyone, once the old cattle routes were restored.

Really? In today’s world?

When the governor reportedly reminded the president that new towns, federal and state highways, and even government institutions, had taken up what used to be empty spaces decades ago, because of modernization and development, he was told that the disturbing obstructions should not have been put there in the first place! Sound logic, right? Yes, if we are taking mkpuru nmiri.

Concerning guns and the question of herdsmen wielding AK47 freely and everywhere, President Buhari’s reported response to Ortom was that the herders needed the military assault rifles to protect themselves from cattle rustlers, kidnappers and bandits. So, what happens to law-abiding citizens, farmers and villagers, who are not only under threat from cattle rustlers, kidnappers and bandits, but are under even greater threat from the herdsmen themselves? It would seem that the solution here is “Let them be overrun by the marauding herders”.

What is going on in Ortom’s state, and in several other states, cannot be right. Nigerians should pay greater attention to everything Ortom has been saying about an incipient displacement and colonization of indigenous communities for some years now. This matter is serious!

Rather than act like his Katsina State counterpart, who unilaterally ordered the severely besieged citizens to arm themselves, Ortom has formally written President Muhammadu Buhari to allow his people to bear arms. The prediction, and suspicion, of many observers was that the president would turn down the request. His announcement, a few days ago, that states must not arm their people with AK47 put paid to the matter. Yet, Governor Ortom and his people need urgent and desperate help. Let the National security Council and the National Council of State look into the matter of the displacement of indigenous peoples and the liberalization of gun licenses, please.

As the PDP Blunders Along

The Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is adamant on retaining the current party Chairman. The Chairman, himself, is adamant on not giving up his position. The supporters of the Rivers State governor, a defeated candidate in the party’s controversial presidential primaries, are adamant on not supporting their party’s presidential candidate unless Ayu is removed as party Chairman. Well, when adamant meets adamant, an adamantine situation arises.

Ayu’s adamantine posture is reinforced by Atiku’s blasé attitude to genuine problem solving as a leader. Now that various stakeholders within the party are maintaining whatever, sometimes fluctuating, positions they have maintained since the party primaries, the stage is set for an impressive conflagration and implosion.  It is as if the party received, and is diligently executing, a custom-made template for self-destruction.

Look at the recent, and ongoing, revelations of Wike. Look at the monies being returned by members of the Party’s National Working Committee. All because of the recalcitrance of Atiku and Ayu, the first major celebrants of Atiku’s victory. Ayu capped his partisanship with a “State visit” to Tambuwal, to thank him for stepping down for Atiku and “Saving the day”.

Today, Ayu’s co-conspirator, Aminu Tambuwal, is the Chairman of the Presidential Campaign Organization (PCO) set up by Atiku. Atiku has also repeated the blunder of 2019, when he made Lamido, Ekweremadu, Makarfi and co, Technical Advisers to the campaign. What are Saraki and others today? What value will they bring, or are they bringing, to the table?

Yes, certain provisions of the PDP constitution cannot be ignored. But the party Chairman, the aspirant and the person who stepped down and ceded his votes to the current presidential candidate should be sensitive to the underlying political sensibilities. The party is scandalized, in disarray and in great disrepute today, because none of the people on Atiku’s side seem wise, or statesmanlike, enough to apply strategic thinking and situational dialectics.

You can solve a problem without damaging, or undermining, the rules. The concept of “natural justice, equity and good conscience” is sometimes invoked in order to get out of a potentially awkward situation. What did Obasanjo do about the party’s provisions when he found out that there was no major position going to the South East?

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar cannot hold himself, his party and his people together. The wisdom of his insistence on a constitutional provision that a stakeholder resolution can put in abeyance for a limited time is open to question. His clear inability to engineer any form of consensus, or prevail on Ayu to conduct himself with greater dignity and grace, calls out his presumed experience and ability to lead.

The PDP must ask itself why Nigerians should trust it, or trust its candidate and its chairman if it cannot resolve the glaring crises before it at the moment. The ongoing dance of shame in the village square suggests that the party is affiliated to Bedlam. It is putting too much energy into everything that will help it to lose the coming elections. Let someone tell the PDP that stupidity is not a virtue; that bungling is not a type of competence and that blindness is not a type of vision. Just look at them, biko nu. Ejikwa m ogu o!