“We’ll use Ortom’s template in Benue to transform Nigeria if elected in 2023,” Iyorchia Ayu, the new National Chairman of the PDP.
When I read, a few days ago, the above statement which was attributed to Prof. Iyorchia Ayu, I was highly skeptical that Ayu could have said such a thing. No, not Ayu, I screamed. Yes, I know that Ortom is Ayu’s major benefactor in his new role as the PDP Chairman, but I did not believe that Ayu would be so craven in his sycophancy to Ortom that he would throw away his integrity with such a reckless abandon. I waited for a robust denial that Ayu made the above statement. None was forthcoming. I then waited for a tepid and terse statement suggesting that Ayu was misquoted. None has been forthcoming. Not seeing any such statement, I advised myself to wait for PDP social media stalwarts like Olikita Ekani to claim that the statement attributed to Ayu was a fake statement concocted in the name of Ayu by “APC apparatchiks.” No such claim has surfaced. I am, therefore, of the opinion that Ayu did say that. I cannot refute the null statement that Ayu did not say that. He must have said that.
Ayu’s statement did not care to identify the “Ortom template” with which the PDP would “rescue Nigeria,” so, I want to take the liberty to put words in the new Chairman’s mouth and spell out what the “Ortom template in Benue” is. Since it is a template that has destroyed Benue as a viable entity and has eroded the moral fiber in the soul of the state, it is important to lay bare that template as a dire warning to the rest of Nigeria. The “Ortom template” is not a template for rescuing anybody or any entity. It is a demonic template conceived in bad faith and implemented with a sadistic glee. It is a template in which its’ author gets fat in personal enrichment even as the people are malnourished and emaciated from hunger and penury. It is a template of extreme narcissism, childish mendacity and silly propaganda. Nigeria and Nigerians must be repulsed by the Ortom template. It is a template of destruction, division, and diversion.
Ortom has been in office for 77 months. Local government retires have gone for 74 of those 77 months without a kobo of their pensions’ benefits paid by Ortom. Similarly, retired civil servants are owed pensions’ benefits of 36 months. Benue’s teachers are said to be owed ten months of their 2017 salaries. In reality, even as we are in November, 2021, Benue teachers have not been paid any salary this year and public servants who have retired in the Ortom era have not been paid their gratuities. Many of them have not received a penny of their pensions’ benefits. Serving and retired civil servants are still owed five months of their 2017 salaries. The next of kins of those who have died as Ortom refuses to pay them will likely not see a penny of this money anymore. That money has disappeared into the abyss of the Ortom Achipellego. This is the Ortom template that Chairman Ayu wants to replicate for the rest of Nigeria.
The Ortom template abhors building infrastructure, except building gaudy and expensive palaces for kings whose subjects are wailing in hunger, poverty and deprivation. Ortom claims that Benue has 1.5 million IDPs. These IDPs, no matter what their actual number is, live in flimsy tents that would be a disgrace even for pigs. That’s the Ortom template, palaces for kings and pig sty for IDPs. Chairman Ayu wants to “rescue Nigeria” with this soulless template.
Before Ayu got into politics, he was a well-known university lecturer pontificating on the virtues of good governance and egalitarianism. That was the Ayu before the Ayu who collected 345 million Naira of an arms deal for “consultation.” The university Ayu would have been appalled at the politician Ayu whose new benefactor gives away 420 million Naira as a “goodwill gesture” to a handful of multimillionaires, even as pensioners like Mr. Pam, on 20,000 Naira a month pension and dying of prostrate cancer, were denied their meager pensions. The university Ayu would have been livid that the politician Ayu received 345 million Naira for “consultation.” That amount was equivalent to the annual income of 958 Nigerians who are on the minimum wage of 30,000 Naira a month. Even if it took politician Ayu a whole year of consultation to earn this amount, he alone earned what 958 Nigerians would toil day in and day out to earn. The university Ayu would have been up in arms against Ortom for not paying the new national minimum wage despite Ortom lying that he would be among the first governors to do so.
Ayu, the university Ayu, the radical Ayu, the Ayu who was fascinated by Nigeria’s original rebel, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, would have been aghast at the deplorable condition of schools in Benue. The Ortom template on education can be termed a wholesale assault on education. Teachers are dehumanized, left dejected and demoralized. Many have simply given up and many schools in Benue have just the headmasters and one or two other teachers. Benue schools are in conditions worse than those found in war zones. Ortom’s utter contempt for teachers is registered in his government building “VIP toilets” in schools without rooftops, ceilings and furniture. The university Ayu would not want Ortom’s template on education for a village, but the politician Ayu wants the ruinous Ortom template for an entire nation.
Ayu of the university, sounded like a socialist. He moved in the cycle of radical scholars. He was known as a radical leftist unafraid of speaking truth to power. That Ayu is dead. The new Ayu is a cheerleader for Ortom whose template on industrialization is not to build industries or establish state-owned enterprises, but to sell induistries built by his predecessors. Ortom even referred to one of these industries, the Taraku Oil Mills, as a “gold mine.” The radical Ayu, the leftist Ayu, would have publicly excoriated Ortom for selling state-owned enterprises without any valuation of their assets as a boondoggle to capitalists. So, a socialist Ayu has no problem recommending for Nigeria, the template of a man whose capitalism consists of using the state as an instrument for the private accumulation of wealth?
Ayu cannot be allowed to get away by claiming that by Ortom’s template, he was referring to the anti-opening grazing law. Even on that score, Ortom’s record is a record of failure. If Ortom is to be believed, that template has produced 1.5 million IDPs. That’s about 38 percent of the Benue population. If we replicate the Ortom template on IDPs to the rest of Nigeria, and it results in producing the same proportion of IDPs, Nigeria would have almost 80 million IDPs. The Ortom template even on what is considered his one-hit album is unsustainable. It would produce 80 million IDPs. The entire global population of IDPs is nowhere near that number.
Ayu would be doing the PDP a huge disservice if he intends the Ortom template to be the debate over which the 2023 general elections would be fought. It is not a winning template. My suspicion is that the politician Ayu has voiced out what the academic Ayu would have found repulsive because the politician Ayu simply wanted a show of public reverence to a new benefactor, a new godfather. If even Ayu, a professor, a federal minister several times over, and a senate president, could stoop so low in obeisance to Ortom, our struggle against bad leadership is much harder than we thought. The irony is that the cerebral Ayu is paying fealty to a man whose being and whose outlook negate intellectualism. Oh, how we soon kick that which had fed and sustained us all along in favor of new, shiny, and temporarily nourishing pocho dishes. Even Ayu. The lure of pochoism is truly irrisistible.
© PITA AGBESE
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