President Muhammadu Buhari has queried Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom’s statement accusing him that he was attending to the cattle rearers in Nigeria because he was one of them.
Ortom spoke to protesters at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Abagena village, while lamenting that over 70 people were murdered in two weeks in Makurdi Local Government Area.
The governor said, “What is happening now, to me, is very clear; Mr President is just working for these Fulanis to take over the whole country.”
Gunmen suspected to be herdsmen had attempted to assassinate Ortom during an attack on his farm along the Makurdi- Gboko road a few months ago.
However, speaking during an exclusive interview on Arise TV on Thursday, Buhari said he could not deny being a kinsman of the cattle rearers, but insisted that Ortom was being unfair to him.
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Buhari said, “The problem is trying to understand the culture of the cattle rearers. There is a cultural difference between the Tivs and the Fulanis. So, the governor of Benue said I am not disciplining the cattle rearers because I am one of them.
“I cannot say I am not one of them, but he is being very unfair to me and I told him that the Nigerian cattle rearer was not carrying anything more than a stick sometimes with a machete to cut some trees and feed his cattle, but those sophisticated ones move with AK 47.”
