APC Demands Defence Minister, Dan-Ali’s Resignation

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State has asked for the immediate resignation of the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali.

The state’s APC Chairman, Emmanuel Yaro, made the call in a statement issued in Makurdi on Saturday.

In the document, the party strongly criticised Mr. Dan-Ali for blaming the massacre of over 73 persons by Fulani herdsmen on the Anti-Open Grazing law enacted in the state.

It described the statement from the minister as “a flatly ridiculous absurdity and the highest level of public disgrace to democracy and the Nigerian populace.”

By such utterance, the party said Mr. Dan-Ali has displayed incontestable lack of the required sensibility and capacity to serve as defence minister in a country of over 180 million people with over 300 ethnic nationalities.

“We have, therefore, been constrained to believe that Mr. Mansur is a unit of the perceived conspiracy against the good and hospitably peace-loving people of Benue State,” the party wrote.

“As an integral part of the country, Nigeria and a state that gave President Muhammadu Buhari an edge in the 2015 general elections, we demand Col. Mansur Dan Ali (rtd) resigns his position as Nigeria’s Defence Minister immediately and tender an unreserved apology to the good people of Benue State and the country at large.

“As a founding member and major stakeholder in the ruling party, we are forced to question Col. Mansur’s real motive and demand that he publicly explains to the party leadership why we should not consider his reckless utterances as a deliberate ploy to truncate the party’s victory in the 2019 general election.

“Through his statement, as an insider, Mansur appears to have been contracted by the opposition to work against the APC,” the party said.

While it would not dignify the minister with obnoxious affronts, the party said Mr. Dan-Ali is not just an ingrate, but an “unrepentant pathological opportunist” who was working for the PDP while they toiled to ensure President Buhari’s victory at the 2015 polls.

Continuing, the party said, “As someone who read Photography in the polytechnic and later took to animal husbandry with flocks of cows to his credit in his Zamfara country home, we urge our President Buhari to aid Col. Mansur’s timely resignation and return him to his farm with a Xenon HD Camera to continue taking snapshots of his flock of herds back home.

“Minister Mansur apparently is one of those working against the unity of Nigeria and must be stopped now before he and others with such parochial, hateful, divisive and repulsive tendencies plunge the country into deeper crisis,” the APC said.

The party reiterated its support for Mr. Ortom and vowed to ensure the open grazing prohibition law is implemented to the letter.

The minister of defence had in a defiant tone, Thursday, blamed Governor Samuel Ortom for herdsmen while addressing journalists at the Aso Rock Villa.

Mr. Dan-Ali did not blame the attackers responsible for the deaths and destruction of property with billions of naira in many parts of the country.

He reiterated Mr. Buhari’s appeal to Nigerians to learn to accept foreigners in their areas, adding that it is illegal for state governments to set up and arm forest guards.

“Whatever crisis that happened at any time, there has to be remote and immediate causes,” the minister had said.

“What are the remote causes of this farmers/herders crisis? Since Independence, we know there used to be a route whereby these cattle rearers use.

“Cattle rearers are all over the nation, you go to Bayelsa, you see them, you go to Ogun, and you see them. If those routes are blocked, what happens? These people are Nigerians, it’s just like you going to block river or shoreline, does that make sense to you?

“These are the remote causes”.