The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, has said that the defection of Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has brought relieve to the APC.
The party boss made this known while reacting to Ortom’s defection to the main opposition party.
He said that the APC would have lost Benue State in 2019 if it fielded Ortom as its candidate.
Oshiomhole further accused Ortom of subjecting the people of Benue to needless hardship by refusing to pay workers salaries and mismanaging bailout funds and Paris Club refunds provided by the Federal Government.
Oshiomhole had tried to ensure Ortom remained in the APC but failed.
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But addressing APC supporters at the party headquarters in Abuja, he said, “The APC in Benue state is relieved. I am relieved that Ortom has joined the club he actually belongs to. A club whose primary philosophy is to share the money, not to develop the communities. We now have a clean platform to look and search for a credible Benue citizen that can provide the kind of leadership that the great people of Benue deserve, not someone that seeks to make capital out of human graves and celebrate the death of his own people.
“As a party, we condemn any life that has been wasted by criminals whether in Benue state or any part of Nigeria. From the point of view of our leaders in Benue state, their position was clear that they do not believe fielding Governor Ortom on the APC platform in 2019 election can only lead to electoral defeat for a number of reasons.
“They reminded us that in spite of the allocation accruing to Benue and in spite of the bailout funds amounting to over N20 billion that he has received in two installments of N10 billion each and in addition to the huge sum of money Benue state collected from Paris Club refund, Governor Ortom has not and is not paying salary to Benue workers as and when due.
“He is owing some of them 12 months salary, some more than 15 months salary. Benue state survives largely on civil servants’ salary… this element alone substantially explained the vicious circle of poverty in Benue state that have deepened under Governor Ortom.”
Oshiomhole said that Ortom’s poor judgement and actions have escalated killings in his state, adding that the Benue governor appeared to support the killings as his ex-associates have allegedly been fingered as being behind the killings in the state.
“They draw our attention to the fact that Governor Ortom has complicated the killings by his own action and poor judgement.
“Some of those who have been arrested in respect of killings in Benue, were people who have been associated with Governor Ortom, including people who have been in his employ. In particular, a guy who is known to have been involved in Boko Haram activities and who he knowingly reputed to manage what he called forestry guard or things like that. These people as we speak have been arrested and have been in police custody.”
Oshiomhole noted that Ortom got the party’s ticket by accident in 2015 but worked against the interest of the party in the state by his actions.
The party chairman stated, “He actually got our ticket on a platter of gold and he was never a participant in the during the formation of our party. He became a candidate by accident and lesson to learn from our party is that never again people should become a candidate on our party platform by accident.
“We will take full advantage of the current development with the political class to cautiously not only allow those who want to go even wild out , people whose value are in conflict with the core values of the progressives policies.”