The bloodbath across the nation has remained intractable. Troubling! However, the recent rise in the case of Benue State is not just alarming but utterly unacceptable, heart-rending and must end immediately.
How does a nation lose over 200 lives in one night and the assailants would disappear with no trace?
There is nothing about the recent Yelewata attack to suggest that this is just a mere community strife. It is clear case of premeditated ethnic genocide and the perpetrators must be brought to justice and full investigation conducted to establish their motive.
The Yelewata Community has been in mourning after gunmen killed 200 of their people in the North-Central state.
Survivors said the assailants stormed the community penultimate Friday night, opening fire on villagers who were asleep and setting their homes ablaze.
The outrage and wide condemnations that greeted the carnage prompted President Bola Tinubu last Wednesday to visit Benue.
President Tinubu, during the visit expressed surprise that no arrests had been made at the time of his visit.
The president reportedly issued a direct order to security chiefs to apprehend the perpetrators.
“Christopher… Why are there no arrests? We need to get our ears to the ground. Let’s get those criminals. Let’s get them out,” Tinubu told the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa, during a town hall meeting with stakeholders in the state.
Can it be a mere coincidence that in all the killings by killer-herders across the nation, there has never been any arrests? How is that so? For eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s reign not one arrest was made. Killer-herders roamed freely and took human lives with reckless abandon.
From all indications, that narrative is still with us, two years into President Tinubu’s administration.
That for me, is the crux of the matter. And for as long as it takes us to make arrests, followed by painstaking investigations to establish the intent of these deliberate, prolonged, calculated annihilation of innocent Nigerians across the land, for so long shall we continue to beat about the bush and sadly the killings will continue.
President Buhari spent eight years admonishing those who accused killer-herders of being behind the killings. His government was preoccupied with dismissing it as ethnic profiling against his Fulani kinsmen.
Everyone in Buhari’s government, including those who have run away from their country homes owing to insecurity, where these herders have chased away farmers from their farms maintained conspiratory silence. Just so that they can keep their godforsaken jobs.
They shamelessly told us that the killers are not from the country, yet in the same breath, they sought compensation and rehabilitation of these murderers.
Buhari, had in a similar situation, sometime in March 2018 visited Benue State, 10 weeks after over 79 lives were lost to herdsmen attack in the New Year eve of December 31, 2017.
Buhari also at the visit expressed surprise that IGP Ibrahim Idris did not obey his order to relocate to Benue. Yet there was no punishment nor reprimand.
It was also during this visit that Buhari admonished the people to be good hosts. How he expected them to be good hosts to their assailants, was what he did not explain. Town hall meeting was held. The outcome of investigations made, still unknown.
Now, another round of killings, and some said it took Tinubu five days to carry out the visit. Fair enough. But compare it with Buhari’s 10 weeks and you will begin to discover why these marauders are emboldened every day.
Chairman of the Benue State Council of Chiefs, Tor Tiv the fifth, Professor James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, had the unenviable task of repeating the very same lines he made during Buhari’s visit: “Save my people from extermination.”
The Tor Tiv said that President Tinubu has the capacity to restore permanent peace in Nigeria and Benue in particular.
The traditional ruler said his people had made a lot of sacrifices to keep Nigeria united and wondered why they were being isolated for extermination.
He said, “Many of our people died during the Civil War; we paid the supreme price to keep this country united.
“There is genocide going on in our land. It is not a clash, but a well-orchestrated, well-coordinated attack aimed at wiping out our people…”
The paramount ruler said the people, who were largely farmers, needed peace so that they would continue farming.
He, however, expressed concerns that the farmers had been chased away from their farms by the bloodthirsty invaders.
The Tor Tiv told the President that Tiv people in Nasarawa State were suffering the same fate, as they too had been chased away from their ancestral homes in some LGAs.
According to Ayatse, Tiv people’s lands have been taken from them, and they have been labelled as settlers.
“They have been in Nasarawa State before the 18th century. They cannot be settlers. They need to go back to their ancestral homes to continue with their lives,” he said.
The Tor Tiv also expressed grave concerns about the misinformation and misrepresentation of the security crisis in the state.
According to him, it’s not headers-farmers clashes, it’s not communal clashes, it’s not reprisal attacks or skirmishes.
“It is this misinformation that has led to suggestions such as ‘remain tolerant, negotiate for peace, learn to live with your neighbours’,” he said.
However, Tinubu’s remarks to the state Governor. Hyacinth Alia, was what left me flustered. Tinubu was reported to have told Alia: “Your political enemies don’t want you to succeed…Are you just realising that?”
Was President Tinubu trivialising the issue or does he know something which we do not know?
The killing in Benue predates the coming of Alia as Governor, so where does politics come in, in all of this?
The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. General Olufemi Oluyede, and the Chief of Defence Staff, have all assured that the killers would be apprehended, and we would hold them to their word.
It would be unacceptable that after it all, we would return to life as usual until, God forbid, there is another reported case of killings, another round of visits and town hall meeting. Then the president would again express surprise that the IGP disobeyed his instruction or as in the present case no arrests have been made.
Like the Tor Tiv said, no sane person with cutlass as a farmer would engage in conflict with an AK-47-wielding herder. That’s wilful suicide!
For once, let’s reassure Nigerians that every life matters and that any life taken must be accounted for. Nobody, no matter how highly placed, that is linked to these herders must be made to face the full wrath of the law.
It is unacceptable that after over 10 years of Fulani herdsmen killings not a single person is in court, yet Buhari was wasting state resources chasing Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu, whose offences, if any, pale into insignificance when compared to the activities of his kinsmen.
