THE SUN
The Benue State government has alleged that the mass murder in the state perpetrated by the “Fulani militia” has the full backing and endorsement of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government.
The Chief Press Secretary to Governor Samuel Ortom, Mr Nathaniel Ikyur, stated this in response to a media report in which the President’s media aide, Garba Shehu, accused is boss, Governor Ortom, of politicising security in Benue while his kinsmen bury their dead.
Ikyur, in a press statement made available to newsmen in Makurdi, on Thursday said, “Shehu Garba’s infantile statement on the security situation in Benue State has once again confirmed our position that the killings; mass murder in Benue by the Fulani militia has the full endorsement of the Buhari government.
“It also goes to confirm that the Presidential spokesman does not only speak for Buhari but for some terrorist Fulani groups too.
He noted that the presidential spokesman had made futile attempts to twist events and history in Benue State describing it as unfortunate and reprehensible adding that “It shows how much he and others in that league have misled the government and Nigerian people in the last inglorious eight years.
While stating that it is common knowledge that as the Commander-in-Chief, Buhari has empowered and emboldened the Fulani pastoralists in their expansionist agenda including killings, Ikyur said it is equally a known fact that President Buhari has failed woefully in securing Nigeria, and Benue State in particular.
According to him, Governor Samuel Ortom has repeatedly pleaded with the Buhari government to intervene in the incessant invasion of Benue State by Fulani militias lamenting that “The President sadly chooses to endorse the invasion and merely asks our people to learn to accommodate their neighbours who derive pleasure in killing and dispossessing them of their ancestral lands.”
The statement read: “What the Buhari administration has done to our people through the Fulani militants as confirmed by Shehu Garba is to spit on the graves of our compatriots mowed down needlessly by Fulani militia. We shall not forget these atrocities…
