By Emmauel Oladesu

 

Mai Mala Buni, seer and dreamer, governor of Yobe State and National Caretaker Chairman of the All Progressives Congress(APC), has unfolded plans by the party to rule Nigeria for the next 32 years.

His projection is that the ruling party should be in the saddle for eight terms without interruption. Technically speaking, Nigeria is a two-party state. The country’s historical antecedents, its pattern of alliances, coalitions, mergers and fusions lend credence to its disposition to the dominance of two parties, with other smaller or mushroom platforms merely serving as spectators on poll day.

Buni’s permutation is that if the ruling party puts its house in order and reconnect with Nigerians who gave President Muhammadu Buhari the mandate to steer the affairs of the nation-state in 2015 and 2019, the opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which is also a formidable party with tap roots across the country, can be kept away from power.

In other words, if APC can reform itself and forge reconciliation, and if the government it has midwifed performs exceptionally and excellently to the admiration of majority of Nigerians, it may continue to beat other parties in a free and fair election.

This brand of wishful thinking was once expressed by Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, former Minister of Economic Planning and Chairman of the PDP, shortly after the 2007 polls.

During the controversial general elections conducted by the National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Prof. Maurice Iwu, losers were declared winners. It was reminiscent of the landslide and moonslide victory of the notorious National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic.

PDP leaders were excited at the victory won through the back door. But, the electoral falsehood was later  dismantled by the court and the party was back to square one in some states.

The elated and boastful gladiator,  Ogbulafor, later became a casualty of internal contradiction and crisis in the then ruling party. Allegations of past misdeeds as a minister resurfaced, and they were amplified by his detractors. Ultimately, he was shoved aside. His prediction perished with his party leadership career. Although Ogbulafor envisioned six decades of dominance for his party, PDP lost power barely eight years after the reckless prediction.

The first mistake was that PDP was not only using power, power begun to use the party. Its Federal Government lost track; it became weak, corrupt, inept, clueless and fragmented, especiallyafter the demise of President Umaru Yar’Adua.

Then, the party was seized by a monumental crisis. Ogbulafor’s successor, Okwesile Nwodo, could not also last in office. The eminent businessman and old political warhorse, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, who wanted to salvage the party by rescuing it from the jaw of the PDP Governors’ Forum by democratising and expanding its sources of funding, was checkmated. The embattled president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, was said to have beckoned on his ally to vacate office, albeit reluctantly.  But, Tukur never resigned.  He just left the office to allow the governors to have their way.

In post-Tukur era, the table turned against President Jonathan. The governors packaged a virulent attack against the party leader. He lost control of the party.

After weakening the platform, some of the governors temporarily called it quits with the party. They teamed up with the opposition to abort its dream to rule for 60 years, or for eternity. Up to now, the crisis is not over. It has been assuming new dimensions. The party is yet to recover.

Is the APC learning from the mistakes of its predecessor in office? Is the ruling party inffaliable?

Evidently, it does not appear that the ruling party is really planning for survival, judging by its handling of major internal issues. It may be that its handlers are evading reality. Lack of proper and realistic self-assessment may give rise to blurred judgement and false hope.

A united APC achieved victory in 2015. Subsequently, things started falling apart.

A big party where the president can ask members to vote for him at the presidential election while urging them to also vote for candidates of their choice running in other opposition parties has devalued itself. That approach could only precipitate conflicts instead of forging unity and harmony. Winning or losing elections under that kind of atmosphere can only compound intra-party squabbles. More importantly, an incalculable damage may have been done to party supremacy and discipline. That precedent can be cited in the future by clever chieftains, to the  detriment of the platform.

A party that can call an emergency meeting to raise an unelected national caretaker committee and endow it with a curious power to dissolve duly elected party structures at the ward, council levels leaves much to be desired. The seed of bitterness is sowed. The absence of “party democracy” smacks of systematic dictatorship.

A party without a Board of Trustees; a party where the National Caucus is dormant connotes an incomplete edifice. Their roles are lost, thereby creating a gap in structural functionalism. Besides, even if it is constituted, the envisaged APC BoT may be a house of Babel, judging by the conflagration.

A party of fighting governors and senators create an impression of visible cracks that have implications for future electoral fortunes. The lack of amity has taken tolls, particularly on Zamfara, Ondo and Rivers chapters. It attests to the weakness of crisis resolution mechanism.

A party where some new entrants suddenly  become contact committee members within a week of defection does not convey seriousness. Who are they going to contact and reconcile? How much of the party do they know or understand? Accommodation for new members and harmonisation are good. But, when defectors who are one or two weeks old in APC are saddled with reconciliation, it is laughable.

What is emerging from the scenario is that APC is a party whose reconciliation efforts pale into window dressing.

A hijacked party where some committed founding chieftains now complain subtly about marginalisation and exclusion creates an impression of “use and dump.”

A party that is polarised by the ordinary registration of members and validation of membership register, as manifested by the disagreements across some dispirited chapters, cannot be said to be laying a good foundation for the future.

A party that cannot hold a mid term convention, and now, the mandatory national congress for the election or selection of party leaders, which it has postponed twice, creates doubt and anxiety within its fold.

How popular is APC today? It’s current ratings contrast with its enjoyment of public enthusiasm six years ago. How can a crisis ridden party assist the Federal Government it gave birth to to govern well? How is the party monitoring the government to ensure that its campaign promises of reinvigorated anti-corruption battle, restoration of security, economic revival and restructuring or devolution of powers are kept?

The performance of the Buhari administration is a criterion for assessing the performance or achievement of the ruling party.

The government inherited a mess from the previous government. Indeed, the previous administration was a liability. The victory of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari rekindled hope. Today, without mincing words, there is a huge gap between expectation and reality.

Buhari has scored high points in infrastructural development. It is also doing it’s best in fighting corruption. But, how has the economy fared? Or how have Nigerians fared under the ‘wonderful economy’ that had exited recession? What is the import of an improved economy that does not translate into a general improvement in wellbeing?

Electricity tariffs are high. Fuel price is on steady increase. The Bureau of Statustics paint an awful picture of soaring unemployment rate. Graduates roam the streets. Three square meals are not for the poor. Poverty continues to grow in leaps and bounds. Many social intervention programmes are like a drop in the ocean.

The hope of a secured country is dashed. Cattle rustling results into deadly herder/farmer clashes. Banditry has become a big business. Kidnappers are on the prowl. Schools are now unsafe. Policing is defective. State or community policing is being approached with great reluctance in a federal state that is actually unitary.

Are all these not enough troubles? This is a period of boring social condition.

Should all these challenges not agitate the ruling party and its national caretaker chairman, who is nursing a dream of hegemony for 32 years?

 

By Darren Lilleker

On March 11 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the Covid-19 public health emergency had become a pandemic: 114 countries were affected, there were 121,500 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 people had succumbed to the virus.

One year on, we have now seen 115 million confirmed cases globally and more than 2.5 million deaths from Covid-19. “Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly,” said the Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on that day in 2020. But in the year since that announcement, the fates of many countries have depended on how leaders have chosen their words.

The impact of the pandemic was unprecedented and all governments faced challenges dealing with a severe but highly unpredictable threat to the lives of their citizens. And some governments responded better than others.

My colleagues and I recently carried out a comparative study of how 27 countries responded to the emergence of the virus and the first wave, and how they communicated that response to their citizens.

We invited national experts to analyse their government’s communication style, the flow of information on coronavirus and the actions taken by civil society, mapping these responses onto the numbers of cases and deaths in the country in question. Our work reveals contrasting responses that reflect a nation’s internal politics, suggesting that a government’s handling of the pandemic was embedded in existing patterns of leadership.

With news of the spread of Covid-19 flowing across international borders, domestic preventative measures needed to be explained carefully. The WHO proved ill-equipped, provided equivocal and flawed advice regarding international travel, even from Hubei province, and equivocated on the efficacy of wearing masks. So much came down to how individual leaders communicated with their citizens about the risks they faced.

Experts in crisis management and social psychologists emphasise the importance of clarity and empathy in communicating during a health emergency. So who did well and who missed the mark?

South Korea and Ghana

We found two major examples of this style of communication working well in practice. South Korea avoided a lockdown due to clearly communicating the threat of Covid-19 as early as January, encouraging the wearing of masks (which were common previously within the nation in response to an earlier Sars epidemic) and quickly rolling out a contact-tracing app.

Each change in the official alert level, accompanied by new advice regarding social contact, was carefully communicated by Jung Eun-Kyung, the head of the country’s Centre for Disease Control, who used changes in her own life to demonstrate how new guidance should work in practice.

The transparency of this approach was echoed in the communication style of the Ghanaian president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Akufo-Addo took responsibility for coronavirus policy and explained carefully each measure required, being honest about the challenges the nation faced. Simple demonstrations of empathy earned him acclaim within his nation and also around the world. “We know how to bring the economy back to life. What we don’t know is how to bring people back to life,” he famously said.

Brazil, the UK and India

South Korea and Ghana adopted a consistent tone highlighting the risks of the new pandemic and how they could be mitigated. Nations that fared less well encouraged complacency and gave out inconsistent messages about the threat of Covid-19.

In March 2020, just three weeks prior to placing the country under lockdown and catching Covid-19 himself, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson downplayed the threat and said he had been shaking hands with infected people, against the recommendations of his expert advisers. Today, the UK has one of the highest per capita death rates from Covid-19 in the world.

Avoiding a full initial lockdown, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro – who also contracted Covid-19 – called for normality to continue, challenging expert guidance and polarising opinion along partisan lines. Such practices led Brazilians to mistrust the official information and spread of misinformation, while adhering to containment measures became an ideological, rather than a public health, question.

Meanwhile, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced a snap lockdown with just four hours notice, which caused an internal migration crisis, with poor labourers leaving cities to walk hundreds or thousands of miles to their rural homes. Understandably, the labourers prioritised their fears of homelessness and starvation over the risk of spreading Covid-19 around the country.

None of these responses effectively considered the impact that coronavirus would have on society, or that credibility is earned through consistency. The poor outcomes in each case are a partial reflection of these leadership mistakes.

Bad luck or bad judgement?

Of course, the unfolding of the pandemic was not solely down to good or bad communication from leaders. Health systems and demographics may also have played a role, and the worst impacted nations not only had strategic weaknesses but are also global transport hubs and popular destinations – London, New York, Paris and so on. With hindsight, closing borders would have been wise, despite the contrary advice from the World Health Organization.

Still, it’s evident that leaders who adopted clear, early, expert-led, coherent and empathic guidance fared well in terms of their standing with the public and were able to mitigate the worst effects of the virus.

On the other hand, those who politicised the virus exhibited unrestrained optimism or took to last-minute decision-making oversaw some of the nations with the most cases and deaths. The Conversation

• Lilleker is Professor of Political Communication at Bournemouth University, England.

By Nnedinnso Ogaziechi

 

In the quest for a better political inclusiveness of women in Nigeria, there are mountains to climb and valleys to descend into. There are constructed myths in the Nigerian political field. There is a subtle socio-religious interpretation of leadership being a male thing. So the indoctrination starts from the cradle where there is virtually a different type of song in different languages at the birth of a boy or a girl.

In most cases, at the naming ceremonies, the presiding elder uses leadership superlatives to pray for the boy child while for the female, the prayers are for her to grow into a woman, get married and have children. If the fatalism of Africans is anything to go by, the gods would grant as the requests are made and the affirmative chorusing of Amiin, Isee, Amen, etc. seem like a stamp of approval by the society for the gods to grant the prayers.

So the sense of entitlement to leadership of the average male in a society like Nigeria is constantly re-enforced in all sectors; socio-cultural, religious, economic and political. In other words, the female child in Nigeria has a lot of odds against her in terms of getting gender parity especially in the political field. However, the underdevelopment indices in the country speak eloquently to the near-absence of women in politics especially as it concerns elective positions.

The Roundtable conversation with Hon. Nnenna Ukeje shed more light on the challenges the average woman faces in relation to active partisan participation in politics. The moment a lady leaves school, she has the burden of trying to get married and have her kids because her biological clock is ticking. After that, she faces  the task of raising her  kids and has to decide whether to combine her career with raising her kids or doing one after the other. Men do not have these problems. She chose to combine politics with being a mother even though it came with great challenges but this is where the female capacity to multitask gets admirable. Women are able to bear and nurture children and wards, keep a career and still manage to be politically active contributing to development of communities and the nation. Her experience has been rewarding.

Nocturnal meetings is one big feature in Nigerian politics and in a way, it is one of the scary aspects of partisan politics in the country and many willing and competent men and women get scared and discouraged from engaging in politics. Hon. Ukeje feels that women should not shy away from those meetings even though there are huge inconveniences. To her, any woman interested in political participation must be willing to meet men at the barricades literarily because monopolizing the political space means raising the bar all the time and woman must not back down as that strategy of exclusion would get an added push if women continue to shy away from nocturnal meetings where in most cases very crucial decisions are taken.

In her view, visionary leadership must stem from a conviction by an individual to contribute to his or her society and in doing so, one must take certain decisions that can enhance political participation in ways that women for instance do not seek for men to willingly hand over power. Her sojourn in politics has taught her that determination and commitment are key to contributing to your society. While women continue to advocate for certain fundamental changes, they can use their mass appeal to galvanize from the grassroots.

Women must start to engage in politics with a view to changing the system positively. You can only change a system from the inside and the centuries of socio-religious conditioning makes it a Herculean task for women to be easily allowed by men to lead even in instances where they are more qualified than most men.

The RoundTable conversation sought the professional views of a Registered Psychotherapist, Chinna Okoroafor who explained the sense of entitlement to leadership is traceable to how we raise our children and that has hit to change.

Sociologically, sons are groomed to lead at an early age and are given leadership roles for instance, it is not unusual for some parents to handover the leadership among  siblings to a younger male child even when there are older female children. In some cases, the house chores are left to the females who from cradle is prepared to ‘obey’ male authority and be ready to serve them. All the training most girl children get is how to make themselves likable and subservient to male figures in the society.

According to her, power of any hue is painted as the mark of authority and masculine strength and as such, men see political power as the only means of asserting their masculinity whether they are mentally equipped or not. The different religions equally headed by men do not make it any easier as the clerics quote from their books to support the argument that women are the weaker gender in ways that often infer mental weakness. Because of the wrong social conditioning, men often perceive leadership as a proof of masculine strength and therefore tend to crave it through political participation which in any case defines socio-economic leadership too.

Most men she said, feel very insecure to be led by a woman even when the woman has better leadership skills, education and knowledge. She insists that very often, the men who struggle for power even when they lack capacity often have inferiority complex and tend to use political power to fill the void they feel, reason most of them go to great lengths to access political or economic power. In the struggle to exclude women is the eternal struggle to assert masculinity do you often hear them saying, “ how can a woman lead men”, an argument she said is often not based on the key  leadership qualities that develop nations.

As a professional in behavioural patterns, Chinna suggests that an awareness about these socio-religious and cultural nuances and the fact that women are often the enablers of these behavioural patterns must be addressed by women themselves. She insists that the essence of leadership is for a better welfare of the people and that women being the victims of bad political and economic decisions by the man must wake up with the power of education not because they are better but for a better collaborative effort at making the society much better.

She believes that women now are better educated  than before and must make sure their education counts in making the society better through active participation in politics. To her, it’s important also for women to change the way they raise the children not that both genders are the same physiologically but the capacity to lead has not been scientifically proven to be gender sensitive. Any human with the right knowledge, education and capacity can provide leadership. She made reference to the outstanding work being done by women leaders across the globe at the pandemic period.

Hon. Nnenna and Chinna are of the same opinion that Nigerian women must with experience and capacity must  be ready to match with the men ideas for ideas in the political space. They can break the wall built by a mentality that even fellow women helped to instill in boys who always grow to be men in power.

Are Nigerian women ready to step up and ‘meet’ men at the metaphoric  ‘nocturnal’ meetings meant to be a bar too high for women to scale? Hon. Nnenna and a few other women have shown by example that women CAN.

Our dialogue continues…

 

• This article was first published on June 27, 2020

Text: “.. by the grace of God I am what I am…..” 1 Cor. 15:10

What the works of Saul against the kingdom of God, before he was converted and changed to Apostle Paul, was grievous, was a statement of fact known to the early believers; that following his heinous antecedent, it was unbelievable that he could be a christian convert or regarded as a frontrunner in christendom was incontrovertible. From our text, Paul the Apostle informed the church in Corinth that he towered above the other disciples and his elevation to that high pedestal was not affirmed on neither his works nor his worth but by the grace of God. The grace of God found him out, the grace of God changed the analysis and the grace of God lifted him up.

Beloved in Christ, are you aware that witnessing the birth of every morning, attainment of any landmark date, securing of any position in the office space, acquisition of great things of life and for living, and your successes and breakthroughs are not predicated on your human connection or educational degrees and not based on your personal charismata, intelligence, schemes, will or desire but on the grace of God? Solomon explained it in Ecclesiastes 10:5-7 that there are many people of noble births that are on the street searching for sustainable means of income while the children of the nobodies are in the palace governing and issuing orders. Paul told the Romans in Chapter 9:16 that it is in human beings to desire great things and it an act of ‘political correctness’ among us to scheme, it is habitual for people to malign, it is commonplace with men to backbite, it is nonelective among colleagues in the office corridors to bootlick and it is common within the society to backstab others but he averred that all those antics and tactics amount to nothing but sheer waste of time and energy in the absence of His grace. This is suffice to say that how you are, what you are, where you are, what you have and who you are not the consequence of your works but by the grace of God.

This explains why the Psalmist said in Psalms 127:1 that except the Lord gives grace to build a house, they build in vain that took a loan to buy a land and that if the Lord does not keep you, your human security is a mere social status symbol and amounts to nothing. Why? It is His grace that has capacity to change the game! Jesus Christ said in Matt. 6:33 that when you seek first the kingdom of God and pursue His righteousness, grace shall be provoked on your behalf, the game of life will change and you shall have more than you bargained for because all your physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem and self actualization needs shall be added unto you. Why? It is His grace that has capacity to change the game!

Kindly be informed dear brothers and sisters that human efforts are without enviable result in the absence of His grace. When His grace is on you there is no height you cannot scale, there is no position you cannot attain and there is no possession you cannot acquire. It is His grace that validates your race; and without His grace on you, your life, endeavors and struggles shall be fraught with endless struggles and end in disgrace. No wonder Solomon declared that “the race is not to the swift, battle not to the strong, riches not to men of understanding and favor not to men of skill but time and chance happens to them all.”(Eccles. 9:11).

Grace qualifies the unqualified. When grace steps in, physical disabilities are overlooked. Moses, like Apostle Paul, had a terrible background (Exodus 2:11-15) but when grace stepped in, his  story changed (Isaiah 60:15). Esther also was a lady that was unqualified to be a Queen but grace qualified the unqualified and made her Queen. Joseph too experienced His grace from when he was born as a special son to his parents (Gen. 37:3) and lifted him to become the Prime Minister in Egypt without any degree in Economics, Law or Public Administration (Gen. 41:40-44).

Dear brethren, when grace comes, it puts an end to sufferings, perfects the ways of the helpless, stabilizes tumultuous relationships, boosts weak economies, strengthens the weak and settles the hopeless. 1 Peter 5:10 attests to it that, the God of all grace, who has called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while, shall make you perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you. Grace gives direction and does exceedingly abundantly above thoughts and prayers (cf Ephesians 3:20).

To enable His grace change the game for you during this season of Lent, please cry to God to forgive your past sins and surrender your life to Jesus Christ, cry to Him to help you, don’t consider that you have apprehended, forget the things which are behind, remain resolute in Christ Jesus and press on toward the goal to win the prize which has been set before you. As the Lord lives, His grace shall rest on you, the game of your life will change and your story shall be to His glory in the name of Jesus Christ.

• Prayer: Oh Lord, let your grace change the game of my life for your glory in the name of Jesus Christ.

By Paul Mumeh

Hate or love him, what has remained incontrovertible since his election as governor of Benue State in 2015 is that Dr. Samuel Ioraer Ortom has provided leadership albeit cohesion in the state. His posture or physique does not present him as a warlord but like a leader whose domain is constantly under threat of invaders, he has two options; either to throw his hands up in surrender or confront the invaders for his people’s preservation. Unarguably, Governor Ortom opted for the latter, to wit; swim to safety with his people.

Needless to recap the circumstances that necessitated his jumping ship from the then octopus party; the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and back to the PDP but suffice it to submit that Ortom is politically savvy. He possesses the mental capacity to read the political barometer correctly.

From the Agatu invasion by the alleged expansionist tendencies of the rampaging Fulani herdsmen to Logo, Guma, Buruku, Apa, Konshisa, Katsina-Ala, Ado, Otukpo local government areas, virtually all the communities in Benue State have had the traumatic experience of the virulent attacks. The situation has complicated issues for the Ortom administration. He has a huge burden to care for thousands of citizens forced into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, lost a good number of hitherto productive citizens and has to contend with food scarcity.

His resolve to defend his citizens against the marauders threatened his ambition to return as governor of the state in 2019. But for Ortom, the lives of his people matter more than the luxury of the plum office. He damned the consequences, dumped the APC and returned to the PDP’s waiting hands. His political brinkmanship paid off when he won overwhelmingly under the PDP platform in 2019.

He has not also failed in terms of infrastructure development. For example, Benue State under his captainship has constructed numerous classroom blocks and rehabilitated comprehensive medical centres in Guma, Logo and Agatu local government areas amongst others. Skill acquisition centres have been established across the 23 local government areas of the agrarian state.

Beside the over 50 primary healthcare centres constructed across the state, the administration has procured referral (pool) vehicles and essential drugs as well as consumables for hospitals in the local government areas. Solar-powered and hand pump boreholes have also been provided in different parts of the state.

Not to deviate from the point of this discourse, that for inexplicable reasons, Benue State became the epicenter of alleged Fulani herdsmen invasion. Scores of citizens were killed and hundreds of thousands rendered homeless and turned refugees in their homeland. The marauder’s attacks got to its climax in 2018, when the terrorists attacked a catholic worship centre (St. Ignatius Quasi Parish) in Ukpor-Mbalom community, Gwer-East Local Government Area of the State, killing 19 persons, including two priests.

The militia herdsmen who ransacked the entire village around 5:30am also set ablaze over 80 houses and destroyed foodstuffs and household utensils. It was outrageous, heartbreaking and expectedly condemned by all right-thinking members of the society.

To curtail, if not totally eradicate the farmers/herdsmen clashes, the Ortom-led Executive Council then proposed the now famous Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, which promotes ranching as against the former. It was duly enacted by the State House of Assembly and has since been accented to by the governor. Its implementation has taken full and uncompromising effect. For the avoidance of doubt; this is the global standard for livestock rearing.

Even as far back as April 17, 1969, the Hon. Justice Adewale Thompson’s judgment on open cattle grazing; suit no AB/26/66 at the Abeokuta Division of the High Court had ruled against open grazing.

Read Also: Wike, Fintiri reconcile Ortom, Mohammed in Rivers

In Justice Adewale Thompson’s words: “I do not accept the contention of defendants that a custom exists which imposes an obligation on the owner of a farm to fence his farm whilst the owner of cattle allows his cattle to wander like pests and cause damage.  Such a custom, if it exists, is unreasonable and I hold that it is repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience and therefore unenforceable…in that it is highly unreasonable to impose the burden of fencing a farm on the farmer without the corresponding obligation on the cattle owner to fence his cattle.

“Sequence to that I ban open grazing for it is inimical to peace and tranquility and the cattle owners must fence or ranch their animals for peace to reign in these communities.”

There was no appeal against this judgement, so it is law; hence any open grazing is a violation of the law.

No doubt, the enactment of the open grazing prohibition law in Benue State seemed to have ushered in albeit temporary fragile peace until recently when armed men suspected to be Fulani herdsmen attacked and killed scores of people, including a lawyer and his wife, at Agboghul, near Makurdi, the state capital.

It is not debatable that Benue State is one of the most troubled states in the contemporary history of Nigeria. From some internal conflicts amongst some communities to the invasion by Fulani herdsmen in Agatu, Ukum, Apa, Otukpo, Guma, Buruku, Gwer-West, Logo, Kwande, Gwer-East, Katsina-Ala, Ado, Gboko, Makurdi and Tarka local government areas of the state, leading to the death of over 3,000 people and the stagnation of development, especially in the agricultural sector, it’s just trouble too many.

So many IDP camps established by the Benue State Government to cater for the affected families due to the attacks have caused the state unquantifiable monetary loss. It has had more than its fair share of the security challenges facing the nation.

Only recently, the intractable crisis has compelled the Ondo State Governor, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, to give a seven-day ultimatum (on Monday, January 18, 2020) to the Fulani herdsmen to vacate the forest reserves within the state.

Interestingly, the Nigeria Governors Forum, under the leadership of Ekiti’s Kayode Fayemi also agreed to adopt the open grazing prohibition law as a panacea to the security challenges in the country.

Politics aside, Ortom vows that the battle to protect the citizens of Benue State is non-negotiable. For him, “being the Chief Executive Officer of Benue State would be worthless if I cannot provide security and welfare for my people.”

He said in no unmistakable terms that, “no part of the land belonging to Benue State would be ceded to invaders no matter the conspiracy or intimidation.”

A few weeks ago, what would have degenerated into another conflict in the state was averted through the government’s proactive crisis management approach. The Hausa/Fulani community had concluded plans to install their own traditional ruler in Otukpo community; the Sardauna of Otukpo. But the indigenes viewed this as an affront and a direct attack on their sensibilities and likely to distort the historical record of the people.

They protested against the development and the state government rose to the occasion and halted the move.

The burden of leadership is huge but hate or love him, Ortom has demonstrated capacity for leadership. He stands with the people. And a leader who stands with his people under the rain or sun never falls. He was once a lonely voice in the wilderness but now the rallying point to end the intractable security challenges in the land. Ortom is the man who saw tomorrow.

• Mumeh wrote from Abuja.