 Benue APC Demands Defence Minister’s Resignation, Apology
Benue APC Demands Defence Minister’s Resignation, Apology
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From Msughshima Andrew, Makurdi
The All Progressives Congress, APC, in Benue State has condemned Minister of Defence, Col. Mansur Muhammad Dan Ali for the frivolous comments on Benue killings in the media .
The Benue State Working Committee of the APC led by the Chairman, Hon. Emmanuel Abba Yaro described the Minister as a disgrace to democracy and demanded that he resign his appointment with immediate effect.
Abba Yaro states that the party in Benue read with utmost disgust the frivolous statement credited to the ‘supposed honourable Minister of Defence, Col. Mansur Muhammad Dan Ali where he reportedly told Nigerians and other members of the public that the attack on two communities in Benue that 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.
He said “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.
“By this singular utterance, the Minister of Defence 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 therefore 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”, he added.
The state APC Chairman insisted the the Minister be questioned to publicly explain to the party leadership why we should not conside his reckless utterances as a deliberate ploy to truncate the party’s victory in the 2019 general election saying “through his statement, as an insider, Mansur appears to have been contracted by the opposition to work against the APC”.
In a press statement signed by the party’s Director of Publicity, Comrade Apeh Peterhot, Abba Yaro described him as not just an ingrate, but an unrepentant pathological opportunist who was in his farm working for the PDP when core APC members toiled the nooks and crannies of this country to ensure victory in the election that brought President 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 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”, he added.
