From Rose Ejembi, Makurdi

The battle for who succeeds Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom has started. Among those eyeing the plum position on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) is Julius Atorough, a financial expert-turned politician.

In this interview, he talks about his 2023 aspiration and various other issues including zoning formula of political offices among others.

Insecurity has been a major challenge in Benue State hindering every sector of the economy especially the agriculture sector. When you become the governor of the state, how would you tackle this issue of herdsmen attacks and our people still staying at the IDP camps?

I must start by commending His Excellency, Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom; he has done quite a lot sensitizing the entire world not just Nigeria on the problems of herdsmen attacks on the Benue people. If it has not been for him, you would have wondered if we will still be here at all. It is very true that is affecting agriculture but what is also true is that that problem cannot be solved by the state alone. You have to sit down with the Federal Government, sit down with all the other stakeholders to solve this problem. Like I was telling you before, if we moved beyond just annual crop and try to find ways by which our people can earn money from things that may not necessary be affected by this kind of things, that would be a first step and all other things will fall in place. Everybody in the country is calling out to people to take up arms in self defence. I will be honest with you, if I came into your house now, hit your door open, take your property and want to leave, what will you do? Won’t you try to stop me, at least, by holding unto your property? It’s called self defence. There is nowhere in the laws of this country that self defence is criminalized. In fact, let me tell you the position of the law; if somebody comes to kill me and I kill the person, I will go scott free before the law because I did it in self defence. Nobody has legislated against self defense. So first and foremost, you must have a mechanism for self defence and I think Governor Ortom is working towards that. Some of the community based initiative that he is putting in place is all built towards that self defence but again, we have to strengthen those community based efforts whether they are vigilantes or forest guards; whatever name you call it, we can’t go to sleep any more. There has to be a 24/7 surveillance over each community in the state; when  half the people are going to sleep, the other half should be out there in the field going to work and we have to be proactive. We don’t wait until there are attacks on us, then we begin to complain. We have to move ahead. One thing which I have thought must be done is that we need to get a hold of herdsmen attacks on this state. If you notice, the attacks are always on the border of this state. It is not possible for those people to leave and go to Gboko. Have you ever heard of attacks in Gboko? It’s not possible, it is only on the border of communities. On the other side of Cameroon, they come in so we know where the problem is coming from. Now from Agatu all the way to Guma and leading up to Buruku areas, they use the river; 90 percent of the attacks come through the river and there is no surveillance of the river Benue waters up till now. What are we doing? Why can’t we put surveillance, both the police, the Navy and the local people to be surveying this place; at some point build observation towers  along the river since that is where they use; when you shut them out of the waters, you are keeping the community safe. So, there is work to be done and most of the work is mental; we have to be proactive. I have been talking to the Navy as a private individual and I told them you guys have the answer to the problem of security in Benue. If they settle down, they would be able to make meaningful progress in curtailing herdsmen attacks in Benue.

Recently when the state government puts up some state owned companies for sale, there were a lot of arguments and criticisms. Do you think the government was right and if not, what do you think should be done?

I will talk as a business man first and foremost and my general belief when it comes to this kind of issue. I am a business man and I don’t believe that government has any business in doing businesses. The government is a very poor business person; the government has not succeeded in doing business successfully in anywhere in the country that I know; be it state, local or federal. So I do not believe in government doing business but the vision that Governor Aper Aku had at that time was fantastic but people also didn’t have capital. People do not have futuristic thinking and not just in this state, even elsewhere. So, the state needed to take initiative to bring those laudable programmes into being, so they came into being and they were successful for a larger part but that time has moved on. Most of these companies now are moribund.

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I am told that there is a law in place, I don’t know exact content of that law, so I cannot judge that but if there is a law in place that is guiding and it has been there for some times, fine, let’s look at it. If there are consents by the larger members of the Benue society, whatever their concerns are, let’s address these concerns. The most important thing is let there be sincerity of purpose and objectivity in what we do. Whether we are selling the industries or we are keeping the industries is not exactly the issue. The objectivity of purpose should be the guiding principle. It might be advisable to sell these industries to people who would make functional, create employment and generates income for the society. But who are those people who are buying these industries? Are they competent or are they just going to find people who are just around; so let’s find people who are just going around, so let’s find people who are competent in every industry.

In Afghanistan, the Talibans have taken over the country and in Nigeria, most people are expressing concerns that Boko Haram would be emboldened by what is happening. How would you want the Federal government to handle insecurity especially now that they are talking about repentant Boko Haram members?

The issue of Boko Haram at the local level and what the Talibans are doing in Afghanistan is basically two sides of the same coin. It is the same thing. It is an extension. It is a very big mistake that America made to have gone the way they did into Afghanistan but it is even a bigger mistake right now, to have stepped out the way they did. There would be consequences and those consequences are both local to Afghanistan and on the larger world stage and very soon, we are going to have an Afghanistan that we wouldn’t want to experience in this modern world that we are. Now, how does that affect us? Yes, Boko Haram is going to sense inspiration from that kind of thing and they might step up attacks and if the Federal Government does not step up its game in terms of security, if it is still lacklustre performance in the area of security, it is going to be bad down the line. I hope we don’t get to that point. I hope that Boko Haram activities are contained and decimated. A lot of times, you will hear that Boko Haram has been technically defeated but the defeated party comes back stronger but I just hope that the Federal Government will change tactics and join hands with governors because there is a problem with security. You call a governor the Chief Security Officer of a state but in reality, the governors have no power over the security architecture in that state; the police don’t report to him, the army don’t report to him. He is basically a sitting dog. We need to change all of these. That is where the relevance of state policing comes in. In Benue here, we are fearless warriors. We were the ones that fought majorly in the frontline during the Biafran war. Our people here fought in both the first and the Second World War. We had veterans from Benue here who participated in those wars. If you allow us, we would be able to contain the menace that is coming at us. But you see, we are law abiding citizens. You say don’t keep guns, we don’t keep guns and these people come with sophisticated weapons and they are attacking and burning up villages. So, give us some kind of framanework within which ammunition could be gotten and channelled through the state policing arrangement, then we can secure the  lives and property of our citizens. That’s all we need.

In your political ideology, do you prefer competence to the idea of zoning? If you look at the 2023 election, both the people of Zone A, Jechira and Kwande and Zone C are agitating for the number one seat in the state but should this seat be given on the basis of competence or zoning?

First and foremost, I come from the private sector.  In the private sector, we don’t take sentiments into considerations. We deal purely on your competence, what you can do is first but in the political space, you meet a different thing. Nigeria as a country, for instance, has over 300 different languages; some say 320 languages, tribes and nationalities. So, if you say competence alone at the time of Ahmadu Bello when the nation’s independence was gotten, competence was only in the East and then the West and there was no really competence in the North. So to allow them to be carried along and have them agree to independence, they allowed them to allocate so that only one area is not allowed to dominate. But even then, independence has to be shifted forward by a year or two. So, yes I agree to competence but in order to account to the kind of complex society that we have, we can do zoning with emphasis on competence. Wherever a thing is zoned to, let the best person come forward. Don’t zone a thing to a place and bring a slacker but the best should do the job because this is about the future of the people, the survival of the people. In my private business, I don’t care where people come from. I employ you to do a job, I don’t care whether you are tall or short, fair or dark. Just do the job. That is the way I operate and that is how it should be in every other thing. For instance, if you are sick and they say a particular doctor is the only one to cure you. When you get here, will you be asking him whether he is a Yoruba man, Igbo or Hausa man? If it is in this state, are you going to ask if the man is a Tiv man, Idoma or Igede? You will just say Doctor help me and you will be happy if he cures you and wherever he comes from, you will call him my brother. As I speak, I’m a Tiv man but my doctor is Idoma, my electrician is Tiv, my plumber Idoma. I don’t care. I just want to see competence.

What is your charge to Benue people as they prepare to elect a replacement for incumbent Governor Samuel Ortom come 2023?

My charge is very simple, let us be careful to elect someone who, first of all, understands what the problems of Benue state is right now and have an idea on how we can move the state forward. That is why as an aspirant, the theme for my campaign is “Forward Benue 2023”. I believe that it is imperative that we must take Benue forward. The world is constantly in motion and anything that is standing still is definitely going backward. Yes, we have genuine problems; insecurity issues and herdsmen problems but we still have to make progress. So, let us look at competence, the best person for this job, wherever they may be from. The question should be, is he competent. If you zone something to a place and there is no competent person there, take it away from there to a place where you can find a competent person.