President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has tapped George Akume a former Governor of Benue State to be the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Can his appointment heal the festering wounds in the state?
In 2015, Benue State in Nigeria’s North central was one of those states where Muhammadu Buhari stormed to victory to loosen the hold of the People’s Democratic Party over the country. Indeed, the decision of a state that had been a traditional PDP stronghold was one of the clearest messages to the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan.
However, despite overwhelming good will, the state’s script was written with chilling finality as soon as the Buhari administration kicked off in May 2015.
In February 2016, armed men descended on Agatu. By the time the carnage was over, well over five hundred people lay dead, with thousands more displaced. Entire families and livelihoods were wiped out.
The absolutely shocking killings which took place while the new administration looked on in Abuja with surprising helplessness seemed to set the stage for the fate of the state in the past eight years. In some of the most shocking and systematic attacks carried out anywhere since independence in Nigeria, hardly a week has passed by without vulnerable villagers slaughtered in Benue State as a stunned country has watched the food basket of the country become its blood basket.
As the 2023 general elections approached, a precipitous decline in killings around the country were noticed not just in Benue State but also in Kaduna State which has become another favorite stomping ground of the killings.
However, as soon as the elections were over the killings returned and with a vengeance. The killings have since remained the order of the day.
On June 7, Tinubu appointed as the Secretary to the Federal Government, Senator George Akume.Akume was governor of Benue State between 1999 and 2007 and has also been senator and minister since then. The 69-year-old has easily been the most prominent and visible politician in Benue State in the past two decades.
His appointment has been met with widespread celebration in the state.
But, beyond what appears as another pedestrian appointment made more in distribution of political offices with future elections in mind than fitting round pegs into round holes, will the long-suffering people of Benue State experience any respite? Akume may have much less to do with it than he thinks or desires.
For years, as farmers and herders have clashed in Benue to paint a horrifying picture of bloodshed, there have been efforts to get to the root of the problem.
Many of those who have delved deep into the killings have put them down to deadly competition for space and natural resources- a riotous friction between cattle and crops.
Many others have asked how can anyone even describe it as friction or tension or whatever? For these people, the provocation and provacateurs are clear between those who remain largely stationary tilling their ancestral lands and those who move their cattle from place to searching for grass and, apparently, bones to grind.
With Akume now such a key player in the presidency, the hope is that the killings in Benue will receive the highest attention in a bid to ending them once and for all.
But in a country that tends to politicize everything even the lives of people, there may yet be a costly twist. For Miyetti Allah the militant umbrella organization of Fulanis in Nigeria who count most cattle herders as their members, their interest is paramount, and their interest is in their cattle.
Members of the group have been fingered in the killings in Benue and most times, feeble denials have failed to offset grave tones admitting no regret at possible revenge.
There may be a new sheriff in town. The new sheriff may have appointed one of Benue’s most prominent sons as national scribe. However, unless Akume somehow manages to scribble the script that spirits Benue and other similarly beleaguered Nigerian states out of the cross-hairs of killers, he would have failed his people and country.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
