Adebayo condemns politicisation of Benue killings
The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo has condemned the politicisation of the Benue killings, saying that the dead should not be trivialised.
Adebayo, speaking on a national television station, said that President Bola Tinubu’s visit to Benue exposed his shortcoming as leader of the country.
He lamented that Tinubu’s visit was turned into a political rally and carnival, saying “What I see is a general pattern where the president politicises everything. If he’s going to commission a road, there’s always this cartoonish aspect that has to do with singing and all of that. He goes to the National Assembly in a country where people are suffering and they sing these various anthems that they wax all the time. Now, they’ve not gone one step beyond reason by going to a place of mourning, a place where over 200 people were dastardly killed; such a place is a somber occasion”.
Adebayo stated “I think the president should have gone there as a chief mourner and his language should have been sober. The responses should have been better controlled and he should have made sure that come rain, come shine, he got to the venue of the attack”.
He condemned “The president should have gone to Yelwata and seen the people. He cannot say as a commander-in-chief that there’s a part of the country that’s unreachable for him. People are living there and he left them there; he is responsible for their welfare there. So, I think the notion that merely going to Benue is enough sacrifice is wrong.
“Some of the commentaries there and his own reaction to it did not do anything to suggest to the people that his priorities are with those who have been killed,” he said.
He also condemned the town hall meeting the president had with the Benue people during the visit, saying, “In that hall which looks like a banquet, the whole setting is not the setting you would find for mourning. The whole staging of it is not sympathetic enough and is not appropriate enough and that is our understanding of it”.
