August 8, 2022
Senator Orker Jev, Lawmaker representing the Benue North-West senatorial district has commented on the six-week ultimatum given to President Muhammadu Buhari by senators in the country, to tackle insecurity in the country and other issues.
During an interview with Punch, Jev said insecurity has reached the stage that the APC senators can no longer come out to defend the president.
According to him, the assault on the capital territory is a tipping point for everybody, including the hard-core supporters of Mr. President.
Jev said;
Well, that day, we went into executive session. I think only one person among all the senators present objected to the impeachment.
Almost everyone, regardless of party affiliation, was dissatisfied with the state of the country.
Everybody has agreed that insecurity is the number one problem we have in this country. At the point we were talking, it had come to the nation’s capital. There are some representatives who can no longer go to their places again because of insecurity in their areas. Now it has come to the nation’s capital, so where are you going to run to?
So, the whole thing was driving home to everyone, and we have some people who have been core supporters of the President for the past three years or so, not just the APC but hard core supporters, as I always cite Senator Bokachua, who is still a member of the APC as we speak. But the assault on the capital territory is a tipping point for everybody, including the hard-core supporters of Mr. President.
Of course, several other issues were discovered, but that was the core issue. So the insecurity has reached the stage that the APC senators can no longer come out to defend the president.
For instance, when I appeared on Channels TV, the anchor of the programme told me that to balance it, he had invited an APC senator but none of them came to defend the president on the programme.
So also, I was invited to a programme at Radio Nigeria. As I prepared to honour the invitation, I saw a text message from the anchor that they were calling off the programme because there were efforts to get another senator from the other side but nobody was ready to come.
Nobody is happy with what is happening in the country and no one is ready to stake his neck to defend what is indefensible. Some of us, even as opposition people, don’t seriously expect that the President will be impeached, but like a Tiv proverb, which translates to ‘there is no decent way of crying.’ So it was our cry to the President to do something about insecurity.
So, let us hope that in those six weeks he will wake up because I heard what the spokesman for the president said which is very unfortunate. They think their job is to come and defend what is indefensible.
The other time, one of the spokesmen was on air calling senators anarchists for doing our constitutional duty instead of focusing on why we raised that issue, and what we said was that insecurity has gotten out of hand.
Have they forgotten that the man said he was coming to solve insecurity problems and was given the opportunity to address the bare minimum of what he promised, but he was unable to do so, and you are saying that no president can solve his country’s problems?
In other climes, Governor Samuel Ortom should have been applauded for sounding the alarm earlier than now that it would not be a surprise if one day these bandits entered the villa.
Rather, he (Ortom) was abused and called names by the Presidency, and this is the situation we are in today. These people are so daring and have threatened to kidnap the President. They once attacked the convoy of the President, the most protected man in the country today.
