Wike threatens to end Nigeria if herdsmen kill Ortom

Governor Nyesom Wike has said that president Muhammadu Buhari would be held accountable and Nigeria would cease to exist if his Benue counterpart Samuel Ortom is assassinated. 

Mr Wike in reaction to the attacks unleashed on the Benue governor by suspected herdsmen along Makurdi-Gboko Road in the Makurdi Local Government Area on Saturday said that the attempt to kill the governor would cause the country to be buried. 

“If you kill Ortom, then be prepared to bury Nigeria. If anything happens to Governor Ortom, the Federal Government will be held responsible and they should be prepared that there will be no more Nigeria,” Wike said. 

Mr Wike also through the statement recalled alleged plans to assassinate him during the 2019 elections by Jamil Sarham, then general officer commanding of the Nigerian Army 6 Division in Port-Harcourt. 

It was unclear whether Mr Wike’s threat that ‘there will be no more Nigeria’ was aimed at launching a civil war or seeking a peaceful breakaway of different components of the country, but the statement signed by his media aide Kelvin Ebiri came amidst widespread sentiments against Nigeria’s unity under Mr Buhari. 

Earlier this week, a group of Nigerian elders wrote to the UN, EU and U.S. to constitute a referendum to save Nigeria from violent secession attempts. 

Yoruba activist Sunday ‘Igboho’ Adeyemo together with Professor Adebanji Akintoye had purportedly declared that the South West has plans to break away from the country, citing insecurity, nepotism and the unbridled activities of killer herdsmen as reasons. 

Mr Buhari has maintained that his lopsided appointments that favour people of his Fulani ethnic stock were not designed to exclude other sections of the country, and in some cases said they were done to correct imbalance from previous administrations.