Minister of Defence, Mansur Muhammad Dan-Ali

The Benue State Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress, APC has called on the Minister of Defence, Col Mansur Dan Ali to resign his appointment and tender apologies to the Benue people, over his recent comments on Fulani herdsmen killings in the state. This is contained in a Press Release today, signed by Com. Apeh Peterhot, APC Benue State Director of Publicity.

On Wednesday, after the weekly Federal Executive Committee meeting in Abuja. Ali was reported as saying that the attack on two communities in Benue which led to the death of over 70 innocent people and destruction of properties worth millions of Naira was as a result of the open grazing prohibition law enacted by the State Government.

“While we are still bewildered if the said statement truly emanated from the Zamfara born retired Military Colonel serving as our ‘supposed Defence Minister’, we consider this statement as a flatly ridiculous absurdity, and the highest level of public disgrace to democracy and the Nigerian populace.

The statement accused the minister of incompetence and conspiracy. “By this singular utterance, the Minister of Defence, Col. Muhammad Mansur Dan Ali (rtd) has inarguably displayed incontestable lack of the required sensibility and capacity to serve as Defence Minister in a country of over 180 million people with over 300 ethnic nationalities. We have been constrained to believe that Mr. Mansur is a component unit of the perceived conspiracy against the good and hospitably peace loving people of Benue State.”

“As an integral part of the country, Nigeria and as a State that gave President Muhammadu Buhari an edge in the 2015 general elections, we demand that Col. Mansur Dan Ali (rtd) resigns his position as Nigeria’s Defence Minister immediately and tender an unreserved apology to the good people of Benue State and the country at large.

“As a founding member and major stakeholder in our ruling party, the APC, we are forced to question Col. Mansur’s real motive and demand that he publicly explains to the party leadership why we should not consider his reckless utterances as a deliberate ploy to truncate the party’s victory in the 2019 general election. Through his statement, as an insider, Mansur appears to have been contracted by the opposition to work against the APC.

“In as much as we would not dignify Col. Mansur with obnoxious affronts, we would again want to inform him that he is not just an ingrate, but an unrepentant pathological opportunist who was in his farm working for the PDP when many of us toiled the nooks and crannies of this country to ensure victory for President Muhammadu Buhari in the election that brought him (Buhari) to power through which he (Mansur) is one of the biggest beneficiaries.

“As someone who read Photography in the polytechnic and later took to animal husbandry with flocks of cows to his credit in his Zamfara country home, we urge our President, Muhammadu Buhari GCFR, to aid Col. Mansur’s timely resignation and return him to his farm with a Xenon HD Camera to continue taking snapshots of his flock of herds back home.

“Minister Mansur apparently is one of those who are working against the unity of Nigeria and must be stopped now before he and others with such parochial, hateful, divisive and repulsive tendencies plunge the country into deeper crisis.

The statement declares the unalloyed support of all APC members in Benue State for Governor Ortom and the anti-open grazing law.