The Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, has left his supporters speechless when, like a chameleon, he said on Thursday that he is still a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, barely four days after he announced his exit from a party that had showed him ” a red card”.
Ortom made the U-turn while speaking to journalists after a closed-door meeting with the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Adams Oshiomhole, and other members of the APC National Working Committee, at the party National Secretariat, in Abuja.
Recall that the governor had on Monday in Makurdi announced his decision to leave the party which he compared to a football pitch. That decision was hailed by Benue youths, who had vowed to stand with him.
But Mr. Ortom have shocked them by reversing his decision after Thursday’s meeting, playing down his action by saying that it was the Benue State chapter of the APC that gave him “a red card” but that the national leadership had nullified it.
He said he is still a member of the APC and was impressed with the intervention of the national leadership of the party.
The governor said, “It was the Benue APC that gave me a red card not the national APC and I took (it) that it was enough to make myself available out of the pitch, but the leadership of the party told me that the decision of the party leadership at the national level is superior to that of any individual or group of people and I think that is good enough.
“They have spoken to him (Senator George Akume); they have spoken to me and the state stakeholders are going to be spoken to and that’s where I belong. We have not concluded the matter, it’s an ongoing process. I always stand for peace, and I always want peace to prevail, that’s what I call for.
“I appreciate the intervention of the party’s leadership and I hope that we will be able to resolve the matter of differences. I am here in the APC. I am a member of the APC, I am still flying the flag of the APC, I only said I was given a red card but I have been corrected by the national secretariat.”
It is left to be see how Mr. Ortom’s reversal of his decision to leave the APC, would be received by his constituents. Majority of Benue people accuse the APC government, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, of doing nothing to stop the massacre of their people by suspected Fulani herdsmen.
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