Award for the most confused politician goes to Gov Ortom

Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom

The man is just so confused at the moment.

The other day, Ortom told the world that the APC had issued him a red card. Former Edo State Governor and APC Chairman Adams Oshiomhole,first chose to wallow in denial over the Ortom drama.

“I know that Gov Ortom is a very senior member of the party and he has said so repeatedly in print and has said to me one on one that he will not leave the APC unless he was pushed out.

“Since I assumed the chairmanship of this party along with my colleagues in the NWC, I know of a fact that we have not shut out any governor and certainly not Gov Ortom", Oshiomhole said.

When Oshiomhole eventually accepted that one APC governor was about to deplete the ranks of Nigeria’s governing party, the party chairman summoned Ortom to Abuja and talked him out of dumping the APC.

Even then, Ortom wasn’t so sure if he was still an APC member.

"I am here in APC, a member of APC, am still flying the flag of APC and I only said I was given a red card but I have been corrected by the national chairman,” Ortom announced.

“I was given a red card by a senator…but the leadership of the party told me that the decision of the party leadership at the national level is superior to any individual and I think that is good enough.

"We have spoken to him, he has spoken to me, stakeholders are going to be spoken to and that is where I belong. We have not concluded the matter, it is an ongoing process because I have always stood for peace and I always want peace to prevail," the Benue governor added.

The man Ortom has a problem with in Benue is Senator George Akume. What is happening in Benue is the battle for supremacy between Akume and Ortom.Both men badly want total control of the APC structure in Benue.

But Ortom’s cry baby display is rooted in the fact that there is really no difference between the APC and PDP at the moment. We essentially run political platforms--not political parties--in Nigeria. Our politics is cash based and money driven. No more, no less.

Political parties do have ideologies. Political platforms do not. Which explains why Ortom, who only joined the APC just days before the 2015 general election and was handed the governorship ticket on a platter with no questions asked by his new platform, is conflicted and doesn’t know where he really belongs.

And he doesn’t know what platform he really should join because the lines between the PDP and APC are so blurred, you can swim from one platform to the next and it would still feel like you never left that platform for another. Six and half a dozen.

Ortom is therefore a metaphor of the ideology and value deficit in Nigerian politics. His confusion mirrors the confusion in our politics. He is a child of the pseudo democracy and faux multi-party democracy we run in Nigeria.

Ortom is a mess. But his mess is our mess. His cross is ours to bear.