BEVERLY HILLS, March 22, (THEWILL) – Following gunmen’s attack on a market in Zaki Biam, Benue State which left about 52 persons dead, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has called for the imposition of a state of emergency on Benue because the state governor, Samuel Ortom, has shown “ineptitude and lack of capacity to handle the situation”.
“You can’t have a governor watching helplessly as his people are being killed. What kind of governor is that. He has displayed sheer laziness and incapacity in the whole issue, and this is quite unfortunate,” Wike said in an interview with Daily Sun.
About 52 persons, including women and children, were on Monday shot dead, with several other people sustaining varing degrees of injury, after gunmen invaded Zaki Biam, in Ukum Local Government Area of Benue.
Reports say the attackers, who also set ablaze several houses and a petrol station in the area, had stormed the Zaki Biam International Yam Market, after arriving on motorbikes and Toyota Corolla cars.
Noting that Benue has been in the news over wanton killings, Wike said his state never experienced the kind of insecurity and killings being seen in Benue, even when some persons were plotting imposition of emergency rule in the state last year.
“We didn’t even have the kind of insecurity and killings that we are witnessing in Benue today when some of these mischievous opposition in Abuja were calling for state of emergency in Rivers, but now they have suddenly lost their voices. You can see their level of hypocrisy and mischief?
“I am calling for an urgent imposition of state of emergency in Benue, because there is a clear incapacity of the governor there to act decisively to stem the killings and tackle the problem,” he said.
While pointing out that Ortom’s government has not done much in the area of security, the Rivers Governor declared that; “No excuse is acceptable for the high number of deaths in Benue”.
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