■ Says his first task is to reconcile Benue people
Benue State governor-elect, Dr. Samuel Ortom in this interview with GODWIN TSA AND DENNIS MERNYI empha­sized the need towards ensuring that genuine reconciliation among stakeholders can help rebuild his state to enhance maximum de­velopment. Looking back into his relationship with the outgoing governor of Benue State, Dr. Gabriel Suswam, the governor-elect revealed how the former betrayed him. Excerpts:
Your Excellency, congratulations on your recent electoral victory. Could you give us an insight into your administration and what you intend to do?

Frankly, my first 100 days in office will be used in reconciling the citizens irrespective of party affilia­tions. With God on my side and being the governor for everybody, not for a particular group, I will set every machinery in motion towards ensuring that the citizens are reconciled.
I can understand that there is disaffection in the land, therefore, my administration will do every­thing humanly possible so that everybody will be ap­peased with a view to ensuring that collectively we can contribute to the success of the administration.
No meaningful development can ever take place in an atmosphere of chaos; it is the determination of my administration to make sure that everybody is given the opportunity in order to attract accelerated development in the state.
No matter whatever wrong we have committed against each other, for a new Benue we must forgive each other and I will endeavour to work and recon­cile the people of the state in my first 100 days in office, so that we can have a new beginning.
This is certainly going to be a new dawn for the people of the state and I will dedicate my time to ensure that our people live as one, in unity of pur­pose and together, we will move the state forward. We would also tap the talents of all the people of the state irrespective of ethnicity, political and religious affiliations in order to enable us to make steady progress and move forward as a people.
You are inheriting a state where the civ­il servants are faced with unpaid salary ar­rears, what solution can you proffer to their predicament?
Honestly, the problem has posed a nagging chal­lenge but let me assure that our administration will give uppermost commitment to the payment of wag­es and we shall do everything humanly possible to ensure that workers are being paid as at when due. It beats my imagination each time I hear of indebted­ness, what we shall do as government is that we will go all out to ensure that arrears are being offset and even some of the workers that were stagnant on one position for so long, their cases will also be reviewed and appropriate action will be taken to redress the imbalance.
I have said that as a stakeholder in Benue State, I appreciate the pains that our people are going through. For me, my mission is to rescue the state from ignorance, poverty and disease. Repeatedly, I have said that having had the experience and the privilege of working as a local government chair­man, various leadership positions at the party level, at the state level and at the national level, I have been in governance so I can say that both in party I am ex­perienced in so many years, in administration I have also acquired a lot of experience.
I also have the opportunity of being successful in the private sector, establishing enterprises that today are giving employment to over 400 people in Benue State. I believe that I am very conversant with the challenges and I am saying that for us to move for­ward in Benue State, the first thing that we must do is to get our people a new orientation that will give us the focus and direction to be able to tackle these challenges.
I will rule with the fear of God in Benue state and this will translate to entrench­ing some core values that are missing in our society today like truthfulness, equity, fairness, justice, transparency, account­ability, selflessness, integrity, integration, reconciliation, unity and peace. I believe that once you have these in place, devel­opment will be inevitable because the people will be united as one and every­body will be working towards one goal to achieve the progress and development of the state.
Similar to the non-payment of workers’ salaries is the issue of pensioners who have not received their gratuity and pension for over three years after retirement. How are you going to resolve this prob­lem?
Each time I hear of this non-payment of pension, my heart bleeds and as soon as we come into government we will put in place a committee to verify cases of re­tirees and which in turn will ascertain and direct on what to do. Sincerely, when we have this kind of cases we shall not hesi­tate to take proactive measure to address the problems of pensioners in no distant time.
How would your administration tackle corruption in the state?
I will rule with the fear of God in Benue state and this will translate to entrenching some core values that are missing in our society today like truthfulness, equity, fairness, justice, transparency, account­ability, selflessness, integrity, integration, reconciliation, unity and peace. I believe that once you have these in place, develop­ment will be inevitable because the people will be united as one and everybody will be working towards one goal to achieve the progress and development of the state. We will also tackle the problem of unem­ployment through the establishment and revitalization of moribund industries.
By so doing, jobs will be generated and wealth will also be created for the teeming youths. I will also provide an enabling en­vironment for the private sector to thrive in the state. One of the things I have al­ways said is that when you rule with the fear of God, corruption will be eliminated to its barest minimum.
I believe that if we eliminate corruption, we should have enough resources to take care of teachers and workers’ salaries and pensioners, because if you talk of govern­ment not being able to pay and see what government operatives are doing, in terms of personal things, it sends a wrong signal all together that something is wrong.
What would be your position on the issue of caretaker chairmen who were reconstituted by the out-go­ing governor, Gabriel Suswam?
I am not yet the governor but by the grace of God when we assume office and get to that bridge we will cross it.
You resigned from the Peoples Democratic Party and less than 48 hours after you got the ticket of the All Progressives Congress to stand for the governorship election which you eventually won. How did this happen?
I want to say that to me, it is a divine ar­rangement by God himself to have the op­portunity to fly the flag of APC in Benue State as the gubernatorial candidate. The truth is that I left the PDP on the 9th of De­cember, 2014 and I had my plans too be­cause I was short-changed by the powers that be.
Earlier, I had indicated that unless we have free, fair and transparent primaries, I was going to contest it. When the ward congresses were held, we were short-changed, it was not transparent, it was not fair, the materials were hijacked and dele­gates and members of the party were left in the cold and some few people took the materials, went and wrote names of their surrogates as delegates.
That was where the process was rigged.
I had written complaints to the national leadership of the party and I had thought they were going to respond to my com­plaint; they kept assuring me until nothing came out of it.
I left the party on the 9th when we had completed the processes of the nomination in PDP and decided to resign on that 9th and on the same 9th I had calls from my sympathizers who were in APC who felt that if I had won the primaries within the PDP they were going to vote for me and they told me that I still have an opportuni­ty to become a candidate in APC. I asked how and they told me that their constitu­tion was amended in October 2014 to al­low room for late entrants into the party like me.
Once you are able to secure a waiv­er and you have your clearance and the leadership of the party sees that you can add value to what they are doing, you will be allowed to contest and since primaries were postponed from 4th to 5th or rather, primaries were truncated by a court in­junction on the 4th and 5th for gubernato­rial in APC, a new date was for 10th and 11th and so they advised that if I can start the process, I will be eligible to contest the primaries on the 10th and 11th.
I put a call to the leader of the party and he confirmed this to me that in APC that is the way to go. That was how after resign­ing from PDP on that same 9th, I joined APC and secured my membership card on the same 9th, I bought the form, did the needful, applied for waiver, it was facil­itated and as God will have it, I got the waiver the same night and I was allowed to contest after being cleared by the com­mittee that was put in place.
In all of this, looking back into your relationship with the outgoing governor, how did you feel about the development?
Honestly speaking, I feel betrayed be­cause even after playing a key role in his emergence as governor of Benue State in 2007, he deliberately set out to under­mine my success as the governor of the state. When our leader, Senator George Akume directed us on what to do in the run-up to the 2007 governorship election, I alongside others worked tirelessly to en­sure that Suswam became governor. Even though Iam his senior in age and politics, I never abstained from my role as a dedi­cated party leader.
When I served under him as National Au­ditor at the PDP headquarters and later as minister, I never betrayed him nor worked at cross purposes with his intentions. I was, therefore, saddened when he worked to undermine my ambition to be governor of Benue State.