Demagoguery sells. If in doubt, check the rise and continued relevance of Donald Trump, former US president, who just aggregated and weaponised the grievances of a section of the society and launched a political career that took the world by storm, changed the face of US democracy and exposed its inherent weaknesses. That is the power of demagoguery. It exploits one key weakness of democracy – the empowerment of the less-educated and lower class in society.
Samuel Ortom, governor of Benue state, has learnt the trick, deployed it successfully to win a 2019 re-election he was supposed to lose, and is taking it to new heights while doing absolutely nothing to protect his people, save his constant vitriol in the media against the Fulani and President Buhari.
Before the herdsmen killings took centre stage, Ortom was a deeply unpopular governor known more for his inability to pay worker’s salaries or embark on any meaningful project to bridge the huge infrastructure gap in the state. Between 2015 when he became governor to the middle of 2018, workers had gone almost 14 full months without salaries despite huge borrowings, bailout and Paris Club refunds that came to the state with the sole purpose of paying workers’ salaries.
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As at 2017, the governor was being insulted and pilloried openly by traditional and religious leaders for failure to pay worker’s salary. For instance, on December 27, 2017, a Catholic priest in Tarka, Fr Ashwe, drew praises for rudely stopping Ortom from addressing the congregation at the thanksgiving Mass asking him to wait until they get to the reception venue where he could lie to the people about salary issues and other matters as much as he wanted. The priest said he would not allow Ortom to stand in God’s house to deceive the people again.
Up till then, Ortom was an unabashed Buhari supporter, leading the pack of APC governors clamouring for the president to run for office again in 2019. His support for Buhari is understandable. He was made the APC candidate only after Buhari intervened in his favour and all other contenders were edged out.
The Fulani herdsmen attack provided an opportunity for Ortom to reinvent himself, and boy, he grabbed it with both hands. The shocking dereliction of duty and unwillingness of the federal government to prevent or even stop the constant killings by the herdsmen is well reported and documented. However, what has been conveniently left out is the role of the state governors, who, as Chief Security Officers of their states, have as their first and primary responsibility the protection of lives and property of the people of their states. What, for instance, has governor Ortom done, beyond mourning and criticising the federal government, to ensure the protection of lives and property of his people? According to him and his supporters, “there’s nothing he could do”.
While some state governors use their security votes to empower the police and other security agencies and provide them with all the logistics and equipment needed to adequately protect the state, others simply pocket the money
At the hearing of the Senate ad hoc committee on security infrastructure in February 2018, Ortom said he knew about the New Year eve’s attacks on Guma and Logo long before it happened but that there was nothing he could do other than inform the federal authorities to take action. He said he wrote, at different times, to the president, vice president, Inspector General of Police, the National Security Adviser and the Director General of the Department of State Security, DSS, on the planned attack but was ignored until the attacks were carried out. He even brought along copies of the letters he purportedly wrote.
But is it true there was nothing he could do? All 36 state governors receive monthly security votes/allocations running into hundreds of millions or sometimes billions of Naira, which are unappropriated, unaudited and unaccounted for. The security votes allocated to states vary based on the level of security required by the individual states and are for funding security services within such states. Funding security services do not mean recruiting and paying policemen as these are centrally recruited and controlled but providing logistics and other necessary tools to ensure the security of lives and property all-round the state.
For example, Lagos state had been responsible for the provision of logistics, mobility, communications, kitting etc for the security agencies. In 2007, it went a step further to set up a security trust fund where the state, private sector and individuals contribute to providing standard security cover for Lagos. The results since 2007 have been obvious. Equally, the Anambra state governor uses his security vote to mobilise police, army and navy personnel to provide 24 hours security all-round the state – and those familiar with the security situation in Anambra before 2014 know the difference the governor has made in ensuring security of lives and property. Of course, it goes without saying that he provides virtually everything needed by those agencies to do their job including vehicles, fuel, weapons and ammunition, allowances, etc to the personnel. So motivated, the security agencies have no excuse but to deliver. And the results have been obvious in those states.
These security agencies, although centrally owned, do take orders and report directly to the governor who mobilised them. So, it is not for nothing that state governors are called Chief Security Officers of their states.
So, while some state governors use their security votes to empower the police and other security agencies and provide them with all the logistics and equipment needed to adequately protect the state, others simply pocket the money and leave the police to operate on logistics provided by the police and federal authorities. Others give the commissioner of police a cut of the pie, which does not trickle down. So when there is any security crisis, the police and security agencies are unable to mobilise quickly to arrest the situation and they have to call on the federal government.
It is a known secret that Ortom hardly provides logistics for the police in his state to operate. “How do you expect a governor that has been unable to pay salaries to provide logistics for the police to perform their duties?” an insider source told me when I visited the state in 2018.
More painful is the fact that the army and air force have many formations and barracks stationed right there in Makurdi and their personnel could be easily mobilised into efforts to stop the killings at low costs. But the governor would rather wait on and later blame the federal government for its inability to stop the killings.
But Ortom’s bet has paid off spectacularly. He got his second term; he’s now one of the most popular governors anywhere in Nigeria just for constantly talking and doing nothing.
