By Amos Aar
THE Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State, Mr Dan-Morgan Ihomun, has described as political gimmicks, the payment of workers salaries and inauguration of projects few weeks to the governorship and state legislative elections holding tomorrow, March 18, 2023.
Ihomun, who spoke with National Record in an interview on Thursday at the APC’s State Secretariat, Makurdi, argued that Governor Ortom, who has been owing civil servants several months of salaries suddenly remembered to pay them two months probably to pacify them to vote for the PDP governorship candidate.
According to Ihomun, because Ortom lost the senatorial election and was striving hard to convince the workers to vote for his party’s governorship candidate, Titus Uba, he decided to pay civil servants to bail him out.
“If Ortom has paid salaries, it is not something that calls for joy, it might be basically because the PDP had lost at the presidential and National Assembly elections. They lost woefully! Out of eleven House of Representatives seats, APC won ten. Out of three senators, APC won two and we also won the presidential election.
“If he is paying salaries now because elections are at hand, what had happened before? Has he paid the arrears he is owing civil servants? Has he paid 72 months pension arrears he is owing retirees?
“So, it’s just political gimmick. But I don’t think it will take Ortom anywhere because he will still lose because the people of Benue have made up their minds that they are tired of the failures of the PDP and they have accepted our party, the APC, and they are going to vote for us on election day on March 18, 2023,” Ihomun said.
Asked what would be the governor’s interest in preparing the minds of the Benue masses and civil servants in particular after he had already lost his senatorial bid, Ihomun said the governor has shown his intention to plant the Speaker of the State Assembly, Rt. Hon. Titus Uba, as his successor.
“Hon. Titus Uba is the making of Governor Ortom. In fact, it is the first time I have seen a governorship candidate of a party that will not be able to speak even at his own campaign flag off. It was Ortom that spoke at Uba’s flag off as if he were the candidate of the party.
“That was a sign of relegation; it was a sign to prove that Uba has nothing to give to Benue people; it was a sign that he was a puppet in the hands of Ortom and Benue people are smart and wise.
“They know that electing Uba is giving a lifeline to Ortom because what the Benue people did by denying Ortom senate, they are going to also improve on it in the March 18 elections and Uba will lose also because people will vote for our candidate, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, who is somebody of sound mind with high character and morals, somebody who has delivered over time across different platforms,” Ihomun boasted.
Also reacting to the numerous projects commissioned by the governor recently, Ihomun again described the projects as laughable because according to him, Ortom is commissioning streets in Makurdi that are less than four hundred metres.
“How can you lay asphalt of 400 metres and call it a project? Is it the painting at the Teaching Hospital that he is calling project? The hospital has no light, it has no water and then you paint one story building and call it renovation? So, the people of Benue know that these are political gimmicks and they are not going to buy into it”, the Benue APC Publicity Secretary said.
