Ortom: Nigeria on life support, running out of oxygen

Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State on Thursday said that the growing insecurity bedeviling the country today as a result of the activities of militant herdsmen was a clear indication that “Nigeria is on a life support machine running out of oxygen”.
Besides, the governor said President Mohammadu Buhari has a hidden agenda to forcefully take the land naturally given to people of Benue State for his Fulani kinsmen owing to his insistence on revitalization of the “archaic grazing routes”.
Governor Ortom stated this in a keynote address at the 2021 Law Week of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Makurdi branch with the theme: “Open Grazing in Nigeria: Threat to National and Food Security, National Cohesion and Sustainable Development”, which held in Makurdi, the state capital.
“Nigeria is on life support and is running out of oxygen. All hands must therefore be on deck irrespective of political, ethnic, religious and cultural differences to ensure the resuscitation of the country,” he said.
The governor reiterated his administration’s stand against the proposed grazing routes by the federal government, saying it was “not only archaic but anti-development and indeed retrogressive”.
He said at the moment, over one million people who have been displaced as a result of marauding herdsmen attacks are living in Internally Displaced Persons camps, while those who made attempts to return to their ancestral homes were murdered a situation he said has adversely affected agricultural activities in the state and country in general. (New Telegraph)