Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom says the People’s Democratic Party, PDP is currently reestablishing itself fully to recapture power at the national level in the 2023 general elections.
Governor Ortom spoke to journalists on Friday at the Makurdi Airport shorty on arrival from Abuja where he attended a PDP Governors Forum’s meeting.
He explained that the series of meetings they had held in Abuja and other parts of the country were to resolve their internal wranglings and rebuild confidence in Nigerians to accept the party’s capacity to lead the country.
He told journalists that there would be National Executive Committee meeting of the party tomorrow which is expected to, among other things, draw up programmes that could ensure success of the National convention scheduled to hold end of October this year.
Governor Ortom said PDP has concluded arrangements to also complete its congresses from various states of the federation before the convention, steessing that at the last meeting, there was an acting National chairman of the party that presided over the meeting.
The Peoples Democratic Party has asserted that the Buhari Presidency is responsible for spreading division and hatred among Nigerians and not Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom, as claimed in the Presidency’s press release.
Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary in a statement said the PDP’s position is against the backdrop of an inciting hate statement issued by the Buhari Presidency in a bitter personal attack on Governor Ortom on Wednesday, in which the Presidency made allusions to genocides in Rwanda.
He said the PDP recalls how the Buhari Presidency has been planting seeds of discord in the country with hate language, divisive tendencies and unconcealed nepotism, to the extent that our nation has become widely divided along all fault lines.
“Nigerians have not forgotten how President Buhari, ahead of the 2011 general elections declared that if what happened in 2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood”.
“Moreover, Nigerians can recall how Mr. President tagged those whom he believed did not vote for him; how he described citizens as “dot in a circle,” as well as the hate language that attracted sanctions by Twitter.
“It is rather alarming that instead of taking steps to address the killings in Benue state as well as the worsening insecurity, carnages, banditry, terrorism and imminent humanitarian crisis in the country, the Buhari Presidency is thinking of Rwandan Genocide while exposing its deep-seated detestation for Governor Ortom.
According to him, Governor Ortom is a highly principled and forthright leader, who is loved not only in Benue, but also across the nation. The PDP urges Nigerians to hold the Buhari Presidency responsible should any harm come to him or his family members.
He noted that as a party, the PDP demands that the Buhari Presidency should come clean on its handling of insecurity in the country. This is particularly against the backdrop of its manifest failure to battle and rout out terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and marauders that have taken over our highways, forests, pillaging communities and killing Nigerians on daily basis.
“Under President Buhari’s lethargic regime, bandits and terrorists have become so emboldened that they now attack military formations, including the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) where they killed and kidnapped officers for ransom.
The PDP spokesman, therefore called on President Buhari to rein in his aides, wake up from his slumber and decisively address the worsening insecurity in the country under his watch.
