Former Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, says he does not regret working against former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the 2023 presidential election, despite that he was the flag bearer of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). “I did not hide it. I have no regret,” the former governor said on Politics Today programme on Monday.
Ortom was one of the five PDP governors at the time, known as G5, who openly rejected Atiku as the PDP flag bearer and worked for Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2023 poll.
The former governor said he didn’t view working against his party’s candidate as a betrayal.
“Which betrayal?” he queried. “Pursuing my interest and the interest of my people? The interest of my people is that you provide what they want. If you ask me, I would describe politics as a game of doing what your people want, not what I want.
“Politics is a game of interest, and if I have somebody working against my interest and the interest of my people, I have to fight back.”
Ortom said it was unheard of that a northerner, Muhammadu Buhari, was president for eight years and then another northerner in the person of Atiku would succeed him.
“We were preaching equity, fairness and justice. How can you explain to me that a northern won the presidency for eight years and another northern, from the same ethnic group, will win the presidency for another four years or eight years, as the case may be? Our democracy has not gotten to that level.
We said no; it is in the unwritten constitution that the North will do eight years and the South will do eight years. So, we believed in a southern presidency and not a northern presidency. That was why some of us supported a southern presidential aspirant.”
‘Coalition Won’t Survive’
The former governor further said he has no plan to leave the PDP.
He said he wasn’t surprised by Atiku’s recent exit from the PDP but described the opposition coalition floated on the platform of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and unveiled by top Benue politicians, including David Mark and Gabriel Suswam, as one that won’t survive.
Ortom said, “People are free to join any coalition that they so wish, but for me, and the people that I lead, we remain in PDP. I’m the leader of PDP in Benue State and a member of the BoT. I am not joining any coalition. We have no business with that.
“I don’t see it surviving.
“In any case, even if they survive, if they are through with the litigation that is going on, they will be defeated hands down.”