The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has condemned the politicisation and trivialisation of the Benue massacre during President Bola Tinubu’s visit.

Adebayo, in a statement, said Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) turned the Benue visit last week into a political rally and carnival.

He said: “What I see is a general pattern where the president politicises 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 now 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 somberness was not there.” Adebayo said some of the theatres 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.

He equally condemned the President’s failure to step into the blood-soaked Yelwata community for whatever reason.