By Tordue Gudu
Senator Gabriel Suswam, a former Governor of Benue State is an embattled man who is very angry with himself and with everyone else at the moment. His only known source of anger and frustration is that his political career which began in 1998 is crashing right before him and he can’t do anything to stop the ship from sinking. He has gone berserk and has been verbally assaulting the leadership of his own party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the national level to the ward level.
Suswam is now like a loose cannon. He has been trying to find someone to blame for his fall from grace and now he has found the scapegoat in Samuel Ortom, a man he did everything to stop his bid to become governor in 2015 but failed. He has recruited cannon fodders whom he uses to insult Ortom daily on social media and other platforms. His only problem is Chief Ortom. He wants to bring Ortom down at all costs!
In the last few months, Ortom’s name has suffered severe attacks at the hands of Suswam and his attack dogs. They accuse the former PDP National Auditor, former Minister of the Federal Republic and former Benue State Governor of being the cause of their woes? They claim that Ortom is less PDP than Suswam. And that is my next question.
How is Suswam more PDP than Ortom? The former Guma Council Chairman and former State Secretary of PDP was one of the very few persons who stood strongly and ensured that Suswam got the PDP governorship ticket for the 2007 election and still went out of his way to work for Suswam’s victory and did same for his 2nd term in 2011 despite the the tsunami of Ishor Chenji that threatened to stop Suswam’s re-election.
What is Ortom’s offense to Suswam? If any individual has been unfair to Samuel Ortom in his political journey without any justification, such a person is Gabriel Suswam. When he was governor, Suswam deliberately denied Ortom the PDP governorship ticket for the 2015 elections despite all the favours Ortom did for him previously. Yet, Ortom went away quietly without malice and secured the ticket of All Progressives Congress (APC) and defeated Suswam and his candidate Terhemen Tarzoor. After three years, Ortom took the governorship back to PDP which at this time was almost dead in the state. Chief Ortom has been funding the party in the state since then.
Governor Ortom’s return to PDP in 2018 breathed life into the party again and he single-handedly sponsored and supported Suswam to achieve his Senatorial ambition in 2019. What Suswam’s apologists are failing to admit is that it was Governor Ortom’s return to PDP that helped Suswam to win the 2019 Senatorial election. The popularity of Ortom and his goodwill had spread across the 23 local government areas and was so huge that PDP won 99% of the available seats in the 2019 polls – with a Governor, three Senators out of three, nine House of Representatives members out of 11 and an unassailable majority of the Benue State House of Assembly seats.
That was Ortom doing Suswam another unmerited favour despite Suswam betraying him on two previous occasions.
More shocking was the fact that despite giving Suswam the Senate ticket and providing him with support during the 2019 campaigns, Suswam was still campaigning against Governor Ortom ahead of the election. He didn’t want Ortom to win a 2nd term. He told a good number of his close associates that Ortom would not win the 2019 election. But his sinister plot failed yet again! Ortom won resoundingly, despite the federal might of the Buhari government.
As the leader of the party in the state, if Governor Ortom had anything against Suswam before the 2023 elections, he would have denied the Zone A Senator the ticket like he (Suswam) did to him back in 2014 but heavens would not have fallen! Don’t forget that the Zone A ticket was to be for Kwande not Sankera. Govenror Ortom did not only give Suswam the ticket; he also gave him massive support to go round and campaign. Ortom himself personally campaigned for Suswam in all the 7 local governments that make up Benue North East Senatorial District.
While this was going on, Suswam was secretly plotting against Governor Ortom’s Senate bid in Zone B. He was also secretly meeting with Fr Hyacinth Alia, the APC governorship candidate.
Now you know why his relationship with Alia is getting stronger. It is a union of two strange bedfellows who are united against a common enemy – Ortom!
Senator Suswam calls himself the founder of PDP in Benue State. He says without him, the party will not stand. The other day, he ordered the closure of the State Secretariat of PDP in Makurdi and four days later declared that he had disbanded the group of elders and leaders of the party from the 14 local government areas of Benue North East and North West known as G-14, though the group has called his bluff and told him that he lacks the power to dissolve them.
For Chief Ortom, what he has done and has been doing for the party is nothing new. He has been a key factor in the PDP since he joined the political party in early 2000s. His contribution to the party has been immense.
In conclusion, I must state the fact that Senator Suswam wants to see the PDP dead in Benue State and Chief Ortom is unrelenting to have the party stand its ground to reclaim the top seat and other positions in the state come 2027.
It won’t be long before Suswam realizes that it is foolhardy for one to attempt to destroy the ladder he used to climb up, or burn the bridge that enabled him to cross from obscurity to limelight.
*Gudu, a member of PDP writes from Hudco Quarters, Makurdi
