​''Stop using me to divert attention from your pathetically poor track record of performance in office'' – Suswam tells Ortom.

Former Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam has alleged that Governor Samuel Ortom is sponsoring smear campaign against him in order to divert the attention of the public from his pathetic performance since assumption of office.
Suswam who was reacting to a statement published in a national newspaper, purporting that he hired the services of a serving police officer to thwart arrangements by the Nigeria Police to prosecute him and others for alleged financial offenses, said no amount of falsehood against him will lead to projects or federal appointments for Benue indigenes.

The former governor said that to put the records straight, he has no powers to thwart efforts by any agency of state to perform its legitimate duties, and on this matter of allegations of financial impropriety against hisadministration.

He said he was currently being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and that he is still standing trial.

He added that if the police have a need to arraign him for the same allegations, he is not in the position to stop them.

“The attempt by Governor Samuel Ortom to sacrifice the entire career of a Tiv son who has painstakingly risen to the rank of ACP, just one rank to the commissioner cadre, shows that the current governor does not appreciate the value of career placement and progress of Benue indigenes, both at the domestic and national levels.

“This latest smear campaign regrettably targets to soil the career track-record of a Tiv son serving with the Nigeria Police Force, claiming that I had contracted him to frustrate arrangements by the police authorities to arraign me and two others in court on charges of financial misdeeds.

“For the sake of the professional integrity of the said police officer, it is necessary for me to stress here that I did not contract him to commit such an offence. Targeting him for slander in this manner, and trying to buttress same by the fact of his being my relation is injurious to the progress of the Tiv and Benue where he hails from,” the former governor said.

Suswam further said that a governor who could sit down and watch while 72 appointments were made into federal boards, including one domiciled within his state, without including any of its indigenes in those appointments, would certainly not see anything wrong in destroying the career of a citizen, even if just to slander his opponent.

“The bottomline as can be seen is that Gov. Ortom needs to divert public attention every now and then from his pathetically poor track-record of performance in office. While his contemporaries in other states, some with even smaller revenue bases than Benue, are completing and commissioning significant developmental projects, Ortom’s reign as Governor so far is largely enmeshed in corruption scandals, from a perfidious handling of the N28 billion bailout to over N50 billion collected as loans and over N200 billion received from statutory Federal as well as internally generated revenue sources, with no projects to show,” Ortom added.

Source Benue.com.ng