I am Angry at Ortom’s Security Details: They Must Resign or be Fired

By Pita Agbese

Anyone who cares (and we all should care) whether Samuel Ortom, Governor of Benue, is safe or not, ought to be highly troubled by the dereliction of duty exhibited by Ortom’s security details during the assassination attempt on Ortom on Saturday. According to Ortom, when he saw the fifteen armed assassins approaching him on his farm, he immediately took to his heels. Ortom’s security details, like other security details to important political figures, have sworn to protect their prize even at the cost of their own lives. These are men and women whose duty it is to ensure that no harm comes to the person they are protecting. They are willing to die to protect their man. They must work on various contingencies on what to do to ensure the safety of the person they are protecting. Ortom’s men did not do that. Instead of encircling Ortom and whisking him away from danger, they left Ortom to devise his own means of escape, which was to run for his dear life, for a distance of 1.5 kilometers. Here is why this is so troubling.

First, in the ideal relationship between body guards and the person they are protecting, there is complete and explicit trust. The protected person fervently believes that his men would protect him. He knows that his men have foresworn to protect him even if they die in the process. He trusts them to keep him safe. His message to them is, “here is my life. I am giving it to you because I know it will be safe and secure in your hands.” This, if we believe Ortom, was not what took place on Saturday. Ortom saw danger, but he did not have faith and confidence that his men would protect him from that danger. He trusted himself and his legs to protect him more than the guns wielded by his protectors. Ortom trusted his legs to keep him safe. Not the men paid to protect him even at the cost of their own lives. This is some scary stuff!! 

Ortom ran away from both danger and from the men paid to keep danger away from him. Ortom, apparently, did not believe that his men would keep danger away from him. Distrust between the protected and the protectors is highly dangerous to the protected. We reached that point on Saturday. Ortom’s flight from danger was also a flight away from men he did not trust to keep him safe. That Ortom’s security details could not wound or kill any of the bad guys is quite troubling.

Second, Ortom and his protectors did not have an action plan in case danger manifests itself. If they did, Ortom did not follow that plan, which harkens to the first point above. Ortom did not trust his protectors’ plan to keep danger away from him. Ortom trusted his self-help much better than he trusted his protectors to save him. 

Third, for how long it took Ortom to run and crawl for 1.5 kilometers, he was not with his protectors. He was on his own. Ortom was left to his own devices and his devices were not good enough. Any security detail that would allow his protected person to be separated from him for that long is a danger to the person being protected.

For me, this is the most troubling part. If Ortom was telling the truth, the nine security details who accompanied Ortom to Ortom’s farm on Saturday, exhibited such monumental incompetence that to further trust them to protect Ortom tantamount to handing Ortom over to his would-be assassins. They have proven that they cannot protect Ortom. They know this. Ortom’s enemies know this, as well. On the other hand, if Ortom made up the story, the consequences on his relationship with his protectors look really bad. It means that Ortom threw his own protectors under the bus. If that is the case, that a Ortom lied to us that his security details were so incompetent, we should not keep them and Ortom together. Neither side trusts the other. Ortom, in that case, that he was not being truthful with us, has deliberately made his protectors look silly in order to foster a false narrative. Ortom’s security details, for obvious reasons, cannot challenge Ortom openly or publicly. Their only recourse under that circumstances is to resign. We must believe that Ortom was telling us the truth. The problem was not Ortom’s truthfulness. Ortom cannot lie so deliberately to Benue, the nation, and the world. The problem was the sheer incompetence of Ortoms security details. They must go.