Leader of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has said that President Bola Tinubu’s visit to Yelwata in Benue State, where over 200 villagers were massacred, has exposed his shortcoming as a Commander-in-Chief.
Adebayo noted that as the C-in-C, Tinubu cannot say that he didn’t have foreknowledge of the killings in Benue because according to him, the things that are happening across the country, especially in Benue and Plateau, where killings have become regular occurrence, should form part of the daily security reports that he receives.
The SDP Leader, while answering questions on Channels TV programme, ‘Sunrise Daily’, insisted that President Tinubu is not a good C-in-C.
He condemned the politicization and trivialisation of the Benue massacre during the president’s visit by turning the event into a political rally and carnival.
His words : “What I see is a general pattern where the President politicizes 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 of massacre where over 200 people were dastardly killed; such a place is a somber occasion and he’s in charge of all the people who followed him there and what you get there is like another political rally. That sombreness was not there.”
He stated that some of the theaters they were doing there with the Chief of Defence Staff giving the President a salute are the things they should have done in the situation room.
“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 said.
