Herdsmen’s killings: South-East governors are lily-livered— Hon. Prestige Ossy

Honourable Prestige Ossy represents Aba North/South Federal Constituency of Abia State on the platform of All Progressives Grand Alliance. He is the Chairman, House Committee on Nigeria – Meico Relations as well as the Technical Committee on Customs and Excise. In this interview, he says South East governors are lily-livered, following what he describes as their poor response to the killings linked to herdsmen in the zone. He also says restructuring Nigeria is the way out of the current economic recession.

It takes one with guts to be a leader. Most of them are lily-livered. There is nothing that will stop you as a leader, as a governor or a member of the House from saying something that will protect your people. If you cannot take the bull by the horn by enacting laws that will protect the citizens of your state, then I don’t know what else you are talking about.

Most of them don’t have that confidence. If you have confidence in yourself, I don’t see any reason why you should not come up with such legislation because you are not doing it against anybody. Nobody will be happy to come to his farm the next morning to see that his farm is ravaged by herdsmen. It is never done but because of the fear of the unknown, ‘who knows if I say this now, what will happen?’ some of them are even thinking of second tenure. ‘If I say this now, these people might make it difficult for me to go for second tenure’. That is actually the problem.

I don’t see any reason why most of them in the South-East are keeping quiet when these things happen.

I am challenging them, if they know that they actually have the mandate of the people, let them speak for the people and do things right for the people. I don’t see the reason why they should shy away from the truth of the matter by enacting laws to protect our farmers and our citizens from the rampaging herdsmen.