By Tijjani Isa
The outgoing Governor Samuel Ortom is a bitter soul and would remain so to the end of time. His bigotry is unmatched. He is disdainful of Islam, Muslims and the North – the North that’s predominantly Muslim.
He can go to any extent to show it, and in a most crude fashion.
The widely held view is that it is because of Muhammadu Buhari. The truth however is that his hatred for the category of persons mentioned, their religious persuasion and the region they come from. This damning mindset does not come about out of the ordinary.
It has more to do with his mental state; it’s psychological because should you ask him why, he will not be able to give any cogent reason but rumble on about herdsmen and farmers.
A classical example of the state of his mind is in the recently announced plan to celebrate Gideon Orkar with a street named after him among other posthumous honours..
Lest we forget Gideon Orkar, then a major in the Nigerian Army, staged an infamous coup d’etat against the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida on April 22nd 1990.
In a dawn broadcast heralding the putsch he excised the predominantly Muslim states of Sokoto, Katsina, Kano, Borno, present Adamawa and Yobe as well as Bauchi. Ironically he did not mention Niger State where ironically IBB came from.
His assumption of course was that the then military president being a Muslim must be guilty of being who is just like the millions of Muslims in the aforementioned states.
Is it surprising that Ortom finds his dead kinsman worthy of honor? Of course not. It’s reliving an infamy.
What is clear as motive is that he must, if he were to have the chance, finish the job his inglorious coward of a hero was unable to do.
Therefore, for whatever worth the honors were to be, I doubt if they will last a month after he must have left office midnight May 28th.
Do Benue people consider Orkar as some kind of hero? I don’t think so. Only Ortom considers him a worthy son of Benue. In fact Gideon Orkar has long been forgotten even in Ortom’s Benue State
The whole idea behind it is Ortom’s unreasonable aggression against Hausa and Fulani, and by extension Muslims, which has since beclouded his sense of reasoning.
