The Benue Rebirth Movement (BRM) on Tuesday accused Governor Samuel Ortom of championing an ethnic agenda in the ongoing consensus to pick a candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 elections.
Our correspondent reports that PDP on Sunday settled for the incumbent speaker of the State House of Assembly, Titus Uba, from Vandekiya LGA as its consensus candidate for next year’s election.
Uba, who was picked after a micro-zoning arrangement from the Tiv-speaking area with 14 LGAs, comprising of two senatorial districts of the state, is expected to slug it out with the state’s deputy governor, Engr Benson Abounu, the consensus candidate from the nine LGAs of the Idoma-speaking areas at the forthcoming PDP primaries.
A press statement signed by the BRM National Coordinator, AVM Monday Morgan (rtd) said, “We consider it inappropriate for Governor Ortom, who is the leader of PDP in Benue State and father to all, to publicly take a definite position against Zone C and openly align himself with the aspiration of Zone A.
“We reject completely the deployment of virtually the entire state PDP machinery by the governor to the pursuit of a Tiv ethnic agenda. We reject the situation whereby well-established party structures would be replaced overnight with an illegal body known as the “caucus for the Tiv speaking area” for the purpose of picking the party’s candidate for election.”
Reacting to the development, Ortom, through his spokesman, Nathaniel Ikyur, said the allegation against him was spurious and far from the truth, particularly as it relates to the 2023 governorship election in the state.
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