Tone Down Negative Politics, Suswam Tells Tiv

By Ella Makondo

Senator Gabriel Suswam has dismissed allegations of sabotaging the nomination of Benue born ambassadorial nominee Hon. Terhemen Tarzoor and charged the Tiv people of Benue State to tone down the pitch of negative politics in the state.

Tarzoor , a former Speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly was appointed from Benue  State and was one of the ambassadorial nominees recently confirmed by the Senate.

However, during the confirmation hearing Senator Suswam who served two terms as governor of Benue State had expressed regret that no nomination was made from his own senatorial constituency a development that fired rumours among some stakeholders that the governor opposed the nomination of Tarzoor.

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In a statement issued on Saturday and personally signed by  Suswam, he described  the allegations  as mischievous and an  unfortunate fabrication which could only come from people who are bent on inputting negative content to the public.

He clarified that his objection at the  plenary was due to the  disproportionate number of nominees from one part of Benue State to the inexplicable neglect of the other parts, including his zone.

He said that he was not in opposition to the confirmation  of the former speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly.

“The friendship between myself and Rt. Hon. Tarzoor is age-old, it is therefore instructive for the exigent purpose to state that since his Ambassadorial nomination he has paid a number of visits to me, both at home and in the office during which we have explored shared perspectives on the potential task before him as an Ambassador.

“It was at that same plenary I had risen to question the rationale for having 3 nominees from the Zone ‘C’ Senatorial District of Benue alone, while there is only a single nominee from the Zone ‘B’ and none from my own Zone ‘A’.

“I spoke only in objection to the disproportionate number of nominees from one part of Benue State to the inexplicable neglect of the other parts, including mine, and not in opposition to the confirmation of my Ambassadorial nominee friend, as being falsely and mischievously alleged by some,”he said.

“My Distinguished colleague, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe queried why his state, Abia, and another state, Kebbi, and the FCT had no Ambassadorial nominees, while states like Oyo, Kwara and Kano had 3 nominees each.

“Thus, it is disheartening, to say the least, for elements of the opposition in Benue, some of them from those effected parts of the state which I protested on behalf of, to seek to twist the entire situation of my observations into a sordid narrative in a bid to score cheap political points,” he said.

The senator recalled an incident  earlier  raised  by him in a  written protestation to the Minister of Education challenging the location of both the Federal University of Health Sciences and the Federal College of Education in the same Zone ‘C’ Senatorial District which the  opposition twisted  the situation into a macabre tale against him.

According to him, the same opposition at that time crafted a fiction about how he  had  opposed  the actualisation of an imaginary Federal Polytechnic cited in Adikpo, Kwande Local Government Area of the state.

He urged the Tiv people to scale down the content of negative politics  as it is was  dangerous  to the collective progress and growth of the state.

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