APC has issued me red card, says Ortom

•Gov not shut out of party, Oshiomhole counters
Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State yesterday said he had been issued red card by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and was therefore “at the moment outside the pitch where I have been playing the game of politics.”

The governor spoke while swearing in his Special Adviser for the Bureau for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Jerome Torshimbe at Government House, Makurdi.

His words: “Let party or ethnicity not divide us. As for party, I have been given red card and I am outside the pitch. So, I am a free man. I don’t know what will happen next but I’m waiting.

“If one approaches me, then I will tell the Benue people that I am joining another football club. I am a child of destiny and it’s only God that will decide what I will be.”

Ortom expressed the hope that the current security challenges facing the state and residents would in no time be a thing of the past.

He urged the people to avoid untoward activities and be steadfast in God.

The governor tasked the new aide to discharge his duties creditably.

However, APC’s National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has countered the governor’s claim.

According to him, Ortom still remains a member of the party.

Reacting to the purported moves by the governor to dump the party, he stated that it was untrue that the political group was frustrating him out of its fold.

He said: “I know that Governor 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.”

“I have since assumed the chairmanship of this party along with my colleagues in the National Working Committee (NWC) and I know of a fact that we have not shut out any governor and certainly not Governor Ortom.

“And in these days of social media, I will not be responding on the basis of unverified reports. In fact, talking about unconfirmed sources, on Saturday, I was in Lagos to honour an appointment that had been booked for over the past six months, yet some of these merchants of untruths and fabricators of fake news posted all sorts of stories including one of which I was being interviewed in Ekiti.”