April 28, (THEWILL) – A report credited to the Benue State Emergency Management Agency has revealed that no fewer than 50 communities across five local government areas in the state have been sacked by armed herdsmen.
Titled, ‘Displaced Communities in Benue State Where Fulanis Have Settled with their Cows’ the report, which came amid renewed attacks in Ukum, Logo, Otukpo, and Gwer East Local Government Areas of the state, claims that there is widespread displacement across 25 council wards, with Gwer West Local Government Area identified as the most affected.
All the 15 council wards in Gwer West, the report notes, have been affected at some point in the sustained attacks.
The report also lists some of the affected wards as Sengev, Gbaange/Tongov, Saav, Makeup/Tswarev, Mbabuande Kyaav, Mbapa, Tsunami/Mbesev, Sengev/Yengev, Merkyegh, Nyamshi, Tijime, Tyough Ater, and Njaha, including several communities in Guma Local Government Area and other LGAs that have been overrun by the rampaging herdsmen.
Other council wards in Gwer East, Makurdi and Kwande LGAs were also listed among those displaced by the relentless and often unprovoked Fulani herdsmen attacks.
The report is so scary it paints a grim picture of the humanitarian situation in the state, with thousands of displaced persons forced to flee their ancestral homes to safety elsewhere.
Many displaced indigenes of the state have nowhere else to go and no choice other than to live in makeshift shelters or IDP camps where the conditions of living are barely tolerable.
About 13 official IDP camps are currently providing shelter to some of the victims of the latest attacks, while others have taken refuge with relatives in safer locations within and outside the state, THEWILL gathered.
There have been growing concerns over the unbridled attacks in Benue State, especially as it seems that the attackers’ primary motive is to sack whole communities and occupy their lands illegally in typical Hobbesian fashion. This has got to stop.
Once home to proud farmers and popularly known as the ‘Food Basket of Nigeria’, Benue has become a place where displaced people live in camps for over eight years, with little or no hope of returning to their homes.
In the absence of a genuine effort on the part of the Federal Government and the Benue State Government to find a permanent solution to the violence in the state, armed herdsmen have continued to lay waste to the land, killing and destroying in a manner that calls for the declaration of a state of emergency in the state.
Many lives have been sacrificed on the altar of greed and political ambition, entire communities and public facilities are being destroyed. And the people are living in Portugal dread of more attacks. What other evidence does the present Federal Government require to impose a state of emergency in Benue?
We believe that something drastic, in that region, has to be done to put an end to this conflagration and to return sanity to the state.
Reacting to the findings, retired Comptroller of Prisons and President of Mdzou U Tiv Worldwide, Iorbee Ihagh, lamented the destruction of entire communities in the Moon ward of Kwande LGA, where he hails from.
“Our community has been abandoned for years due to repeated attacks. Public facilities like markets, healthcare centres, and schools have all been destroyed,” Ihagh said.
He reiterated calls for decisive federal intervention.
“The Federal Government must declare a state of emergency in Benue. The situation is out of control,” he stated.
