Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state has accused his estranged political godfather, Senator George Akume of conspiring with the enemy of the state to destabilized his government.
The governor said it was sad that Akume has not been able to speak with decorum more so that, he was once a sitting Governor.
Orom who was reacting to media reports credited to the senator, where he was quoted to had vowed to remove the governor in a few months time, wondered what laws of the country the senator would use to do so.
Senator Akume was said to have made the allegation while speaking at the All Progressives Congress (APC) expanded caucus meeting held at Castle Event Center in Makurdi, the state capital.
Akume was reported to have contended that Governor Ortom has been lying about all his university degrees which he never possesses.
“Ortom gives only N5 million to each local government every month and pockets the remaining hundreds of millions that are being sent by the Federal government as local government allocations. Benue people are crying and dying of hunger and suffering because Ortom and his family members are smiling at the banks every day”, Akume had said.
According to Akume, Ortom was using the money he was supposed to use to pay workers salaries to fund a certain presidential aspirant in the PDP.
He told the APC expanded caucus that the only federal government intervention programme in Benue state which is the National Social Investment Programme has been hijacked by the governor, his wife, his in-laws and his family.
Akume further boasted that he “won his elections in 1999 and 2003 when Ortom was in APP. I won my election in 2011 under ACN when Ortom was in PDP. But today Ortom said he has been making me to be able to win my elections”.
But Governor Ortom who spoke through his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Terver Akase, described as unfortunate the utterances of the Senator who represents Benue North West had arrogated divine powers which only God has, to himself.
“If not, why would he said he would remove the governor. Under which law was he speaking, under which status of this country was he saying that. Because Akume doesn’t have the power to remove a sitting governor, he tried it with only 8 members of the state assembly and it didn’t work, it failed because it was an illegality and all of us were here to see him supervise the said illegality that failed”.
“I want to tell the Benue people that as much as they failed in their first attempt they will certainly fail one thousand times if they try it again because Governor Samuel Ortom was popularly elected by the Benue people, and only them, have the power to remove him not a senator, not individual
“It is quite unfortunate that in this age of our Democracy, someone would sit somewhere and feel that only him has the power to say whatever he feels like saying and then, it becomes law”
“The Senator, since he did not know when he became governor, the question the Benue people are asking is that he should tell the people his scorecards as a senator for past the 12 years, tell your constituency what you have done and leave governor Ortom alone”
Governor Ortom described the attitude of the senator as unpleasant, saying ‘I am not surprised by the utterances and what the senator can do because on the day Benue was in total darkness, where the corpses of 73 persons were lying in state, the said senator was busy canvassing votes for someone. This simply tells us that this individual does not have the interest of Benue people at heart or does not believe in the project called Benue’.
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