Benue insecurity: Onjeh sends strong warning to all politicians

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Political players have been warned by Daniel Onjeh, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for the Benue South senatorial district, not to misinterpret Governor Hyacinth Alia’s recent remarks about the state’s deteriorating security situation.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Onjeh voiced his alarm at what he called intentional attempts to misrepresent Governor Alia’s remarks made during his June 6 interview on Politics Today on Channels Television.

He claimed that in a state dealing with complex security challenges, such distortions were not only hazardous but also misleading.

“The Governor’s remarks were clear and unambiguous. It is regrettable that some politicians and media houses are taking his words out of context in order to score cheap political points,” he said.

He went on to say that Benue is dealing with two different types of insecurity: attacks by foreign militias, thought to be Fulani in origin, who want to seize ancestral territories, and indigenous banditry, which is mostly caused by local criminal elements.

Onjeh contends that ethnizing or politicizing the governor’s statements weakens the actual danger and gives criminals more confidence.

He charged that political opponents of Governor Alia were using insecurity as a tool in an attempt to topple the state’s APC-led government.

“They lost at the Appeal Panel that upheld the election of APC local government chairmen. They failed to hijack the House of Assembly. They even lobbied for the withholding of local government allocations. Now, they want to engineer chaos to call for a state of emergency. It’s all part of a coordinated effort to remove Governor Alia through the back door,” Onjeh alleged.

In order to discourage both offenders and their backers, he also encouraged the National Assembly to pass harsher laws against terrorism and banditry, such as the death penalty or life in prison.

“It is not enough to arrest criminals only for them to be released days later. This practice undermines public trust and discourages whistleblowers,” he warned.

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