Killing for cows: Who will save Benue?

Benue, a state in north central Nigeria has witnessed hundreds of its people butchered by marauding herdsmen.

No less than 400 Benue farmers including women and children have been gruesomely murdered by attacks allegedly carried out by Fulani herdsmen between January and now.

And the question many Nigerians keep asking has been, who will save Benue?

A news report on Monday, put the casualties of fresh attacks on farming villages in the Logo, Ukum among other areas of the state at 81.

But the Benue state Police command on Tuesday refuted the claim, saying it was 22 people that were killed over the last two months by suspected herdsmen.

This came after the presidency expressed doubt over the precision of the reported number of killings in the state, through its digital communications office. It added in a tweet, that “Law enforcement agents are working to ascertain the accuracy of reports of fresh killings in Benue. The @PoliceNG will issue a statement.

“Please note, many of the photos being circulated NOT from Benue.”

This is not the first time the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari will play down on the seriousness of the carnage going on in the north central state.

When the worst known attack in recent history by herdsmen against the people of Benue happened in February this year, at least 310 people were reportedly killed, over 1000 homes destroyed with property worth millions of naira lost in two different attacks, the president reportedly kept mute and did not offer a word of sympathy to the people of the state.

The first of those two attacks happened on February 8, 2016; 10 people were killed and over 300 displaced in clashes between herdsmen and farmers at Tom-Anyiin and Tom- Ataan in Buruku Local Government Area (LGA) of the state.

That attack was followed by another one in Agatu LGA on February 29, 2016, this time a more gruesome one, claiming the lives of over 300 villagers and displacing more than 7000 of them.

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Reacting to the response of the president then, Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, in an address to the National Conference on Culture and Tourism, said, “I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tolerance for the serial massacres that have become the nation’s identification stamp.

“…The nation is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject appeasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.

“Let me repeat, and of course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have yet to encounter a terse, rigorous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram repudiate its founding clerics.”

The Benue massacre continued on March 9, 2016, with Ngorukgan, Tse Chia, Deghkia and Nhumbe in Logo LGA attacked and eight residents reportedly killed. Following that was the March 13, 2016 attack, which claimed the lives of six people including an All Progressives Congress (APC) youth leader in Tarkaa LGA.

Also in April, residents of Buruku, Logo and Kwande local government areas mostly aged women and nursing mothers at the Internally Displaced Peoples’ (IDPs’) camps in Anyiin and Moon communities, while receiving donations from the senator representing the area, Barnabas Gemade, claimed that herdsmen attacked their villages killing 18 persons and poisoning their community water sources.

Tahav Agerzua, a Benue indigene, in a reported interview this week Monday, told AFP, “The magnitude of killings is enormous. Scores of people were killed in the past two weeks by Fulani herdsmen in at least 10 local government areas of the state.”

The killings, which has been on for years now appear to have climbed to its peak within this year, as hardly any month goes by without several news of Benue farmers and villagers being massacred and their homes destroyed by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

Benue state government is blaming the cause of the conflict on a long-running conflict over grazing rights between the mainly Muslim Fulani herders and largely Christian farmers in the religiously mixed state.

In the light of all these, the people have continued to call on the Federal Government to come to their rescue. And the state’s governor, Samuel Ortom is insisting that the state will not surrender its land to the evading herdsmen.

Meanwhile, President Buhari, a Northern Fulani himself who also own cows, has proposed the creation of grazing lands to prevent further clashes, but Governor Ortom and his people are not in support of that, but say, like many other states of the federation, they can only allow ranches for the herdsmen.

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While this proposal for grazing reserve is welcomed by many Northern National Assembly members, who are now pushing for a grazing bill in the House, many of their Southern colleagues are against the bill in totality.

Aside Benue state, the herdsmen have in recent times attacked many other states of the federation, leaving each state with tales of deaths, mourning, sorrow, and unending pains.

Notable among the states to have suffered in the hand of the marauding herdsmen is Enugu state, where the people of Uzo-Uwani LGA, on February 9, witnessed a tragic event, where over 30 of the villagers were gruesomely murdered.

Ekiti, Ondo, Ebonyi, Abia, Delta, Plateau, Nasarawa and Kogi states all have one tale or the other of Fulani herdsmen menace.

While the debates for grazing reserve and ranches for the herdsmen continue, Nigerians want to see the government make determined efforts to checkmate the activities of these herdsmen, not only in Benue, but also in other parts of the country where people are butchered, and farmlands destroyed for cows to survive.

Nigerians want to see the same vigour against these herdsmen attacks similar to that being expended against suspected corrupt public officials, or against terrorists.

Nigerians wait for a solution to the herdsmen carnages.

 

Ripples Nigeria…without borders, without fears

BY Ebere Ndukwu

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