Benue is bleeding. And those we elected to protect us are either asleep, too afraid, or worse complicit.
In the last year alone, over 2,600 people have been killed in Benue State. Not by disease or famine, but by well-armed, well-coordinated killers who move with impunity. Eighteen of our twenty-three local governments have been devastated. Entire communities have vanished. Farms lie fallow. Schools stand empty. Churches are silenced. Homes have become tombs.
Not long ago, we watched in disbelief as the governor of Benue whose state is reeling from daily attacks decided his time was better spent visiting another governor, one facing the same fate. This is leadership? Is this what we are supposed to follow? Why is the governor of Benue more concerned with showing sympathy for another than with staying in his own state to confront the growing terror?
Imagine the message it sends when a governor, after the brutal slaughter of his own citizens, leaves his state to give a “condolence” visit. Shouldn’t he be on the frontlines, ensuring the safety of his people? Why must we watch from the sidelines as our leaders squander their time and energy on showmanship instead of taking responsibility for their own?
A governor who abandons his state during a crisis should not be shown sympathy, he should be questioned. And yet, we remain silent, as political leaders and elites across the country ignore the cries for help.
But there’s more.
At a time when Benue needed a wartime leader, Governor Hyacinth Alia chose to travel to console another leader while his own people were being slaughtered. Let that sink in. What business does a leader have offering sympathies elsewhere when his own people are dying?
No, sir. You do not leave your grieving people to comfort others. You stay rooted. You lead from the front. You hold the ground. You become the governor other governors come to console. That is what leadership looks like. That is what urgency sounds like.
And yet, the silence from security forces is even more deafening.
Where are the security forces before the killings begin? The job of security forces is not to retrieve dead bodies but to prevent people from dying by keeping them safe. Why do they only appear after the blood has been spilled? Why must they show up to count bodies and issue statements when they could have been there to prevent the carnage?
Why must citizens always feel like they’re left to fend for themselves while those tasked with protecting them seem to show up only after the damage is done? The same pattern repeats villagers cry out for help hours before an attack, but no one arrives in time to stop the slaughter.
Why? Who is benefiting from this pattern of calculated inaction?
We are told the attackers are “unknown.” But they are not invisible. They do not descend from the sky. They are men. Armed, organized, and relentless. Yet, there has not been a single meaningful arrest. Not one conviction.
This is not a natural disaster. This is not a flood. This is ethnic cleansing brutal, deliberate, and unopposed.
What is happening in Benue is not just conflict. It is conquest. Armed herders have killed children in their sleep, wiped out entire villages, and occupied lands without facing any consequences. They do not hide. They do not run. They simply return. Again. And again.
And while we bury our dead, Abuja sleeps.
We are not asking for pity. We are demanding justice. We are demanding a government that governs all, not just some. When killings erupt in other states, swift military action follows. Presidential visits are made. Media coverage is full. But when Benue calls out, we are met with indifference.
Even worse is the silence from our own elite.
Where are Benue’s three senators? Where are our over ten representatives in the National Assembly? What of the SGF? The Minister of Water Resources? The heads of commissions? The special advisers? Former governors? Prominent sons and daughters in Abuja? Where are the voices of our traditional rulers the Tor Tiv, the Och’Idoma, the district heads, the clan leaders whose people are dying by the hundreds? Why the silence? Why the fear? What are we trading for this silence lives?
In the midst of these attacks, the Benue government unveiled an ₦853 billion reconstruction plan over five years. But what are we rebuilding? Empty towns? Uninhabited schools? Homes soaked in blood? You do not rebuild before you secure. You cannot develop a war zone.
Benue was once the Food Basket of the Nation. But how do you grow maize on mass graves? How do you harvest yam in the shadow of grief?
This is not a political matter. It is a moral emergency. The silence of our leaders, the delay of the federal government, the absence of preemptive security action, and the lack of national outrage these are not oversights. They are betrayals.
When killers are bolder than protectors, we do not have a security problem; we have a leadership crisis.
And until Nigeria decides that the lives of Benue people matter as much as those in other states, this injustice will persist.
We are not helpless. We are not voiceless. But we are tired of mourning. Tired of crying into voids. Tired of leaders who chase camera flashes while their citizens dig shallow graves. Tired of kings who won’t speak. Tired of security forces who show up to document tragedy, not prevent it.
History will remember this moment. It will remember who stood up and who looked away. It will remember who led and who fled. It will remember who kept quiet while Benue bled.
And someday, the children growing up in IDP camps today will ask:
“What did you do when our land was being taken?”
“Where were you when our mothers were butchered?”
“Why didn’t anyone speak?”
Let this be the answer:
We saw. We spoke. We fought.
And we will never stop until Benue breathes again.
Stephanie Shaakaa
University of Agriculture, Makurdi
Benue State.
