Joseph Bakare
A former aide to Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom who is eyeing the governorship position under the All Progressives Congress (APC), Hon. Titus Zam, has vowed to push his former boss out of office in 2019.
Zam, immediate past Special Adviser on Bureau for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, said in Makurdi that he decided to join the governorship race rescue the state from Ortom’s poor performance and to fix the state if elected.
The guber aspirant lamented that the governor being ignorant of APC ideologies, manifestoes and programs, could not act on them.
“The Benue people are poorer under Governor Ortom than the two previous administrations. The gap between the rich and ordinary man in the state today is wider as the middle class that was systematically created by George Akume and Gabriel Suswam has been deliberately wiped out by Ortom’s administration.
“Unemployment in Benue today have reached their zenith and no one cares. As I speak, there is no single window for the employment of Benue graduates as all the openings in both private and public sectors have been shut down,” he alleged.
The former adviser promised to reinstate over 10,000 local government workers who were sacked by the Ortom’s administration if elected into office, stressing that the PDP government has abused employment at the local government level.
He decried the large-scale killings in many parts of the state in recent months, saying that he would stick to the enactment of the anti-open grazing law in the state, but would be systematically implemented using the conventional security agencies instead of using livestock guards.
Zam promised to run a government that would be people-driven using his five point agenda which includes; security, civil service welfare/pension administration and institutionalization of good governance, modernized and commercialized agriculture/urban/rural renewal, education and health as well as youth empowerment and poverty reduction.
“The challenge of insecurity is not limited to herdsmen/farmers crisis but include other threats to life such as, kidnapping, communal clashes, armed robbery and among others. Therefore, if elected, I would adopt a multi-dimensional approach towards tackling these challenges”, he added