Many married women in Benue communities attacked by murderous herdsmen are said to be exchanging their dignity for food as hunger ravages the area. Many of them are said to have abandoned their husbands and children for privileged men who bait them with food and money. Some others, it was learnt, are marrying off their daughters to reduce their burdens and meet up with their needs. Mindless killings of the men and inability of the survivours to cultivate the land and cater for their families are believed to be responsible for the unseemly acts, INNOCENT DURU reports.
Deafening sounds of gunshots have been reverberating in different parts of Benue State in the last four weeks. As of Wednesday, no fewer than five men, including a serving commissioner’s brother, had been killed by gunmen suspected to be herders.
Three of the victims were said to have been killed in Logo Local Government Area. Logo is the hometown of former governor Gabriel Suswan. One of the victims, a brother to a serving commissioner, was said to have been murdered in Agatu area while the last person was reportedly killed in Guma, where the incumbent governor, Samuel Ortom, hails from.
The renewed attacks were said to have heightened fears among the people, scared farmers off their farms and compounded the challenge of food insecurity in the embattled communities.
“They killed three people last month. They killed one Catholic Church catechist who was a native of Guma. He was travelling across Logo but unfortunately met his untimely death here.
“The sister of the catechist is married here in Logo. They also killed a provision trader called Chidi. They abducted and murdered him, and dumped him in a bush. We are yet to recover his corpse.
“They took him to a very distant place in the forest and murdered him there. It was Jukun women who were travelling that saw him.
“It is difficult for us to access that area because the herders are too many there. Our soldiers who were there were moved out, and that gave the herders the opportunity to move in.
“The third was a community volunteer guy who was travelling. They murdered him on his way in cold blood,” a resident of Logo who gave his name simply as Jerry said.
Another member of the community, Terkura, said he was one of the people seriously affected by the crisis.
“Some of my relatives have been lost to the herdsmen’s attacks. Some have lost their properties. My father-in-law’s house was razed by the herders.
“I had to relocate my mother-in-law to another place. On that fateful day, they killed about 18 people and razed some houses.
“The herders’ kind of warfare is the guerilla style. They hit and retreat. Sometimes they would come as early as 7: 30 or 8:30 in the evening and before you know it, they would do it and retreat into the bush.”
A prominent member of Odugbeho area in Agatu, Hon. Bawa, was visibly disturbed as he spoke about the activities of murderous herdsmen in the community.
He said: “Herdsmen have returned to Agatu again and are troubling us. They are destroying our farm products. It has been on for close to three weeks, if not more.
“They killed the brother of a serving commissioner in the neighbouring community. They burnt my yam seedlings numbering about 2,000.
“I have decided to move most of my things to Otukpo. I have even relocated my children there because of the crisis. So many other people have also relocated their children.”
In Guma, a native who gave his name as Samuel said: “One person was killed last week by the herders. There are palpable fears among our people and we can hardly sleep.”
Women abandon husbands, children in search of survival
In Logo, about 40 per cent of the natives were said to have been displaced with some of them seeking refuge in internally displaced persons’ camps. For more than five years, the bread winners have not had the opportunity of going back to their farms as they are no go area for them because of the menace of killer herdsmen.
Acute hunger and deprivation are said to have become the order of the day for many families.
Terkura said: “Now our people have run away and taking shelter in places where they can’t even find a piece of land to cultivate what they would survive on.
“They are living on charity. Most of our people have resorted to begging. The worst of it is that, you know, women’s resistance to poverty is rare, compared to men.
“Some persons are even enticing some people’s wives with money or food and even taking them away from their husbands. That is the worst aspect of it.
“Very little children are being abandoned by these women because they are suffering too much. The situation is so bad.
“Logo is made up of 10 council wards and there is none that is not affected by the crisis.
“There are always one, two or more attacks in each area. But the severity is more in some parts of Logo than others.”
Regretting that the people are no more at peace, he said: “Imagine a community of more than 85,000 people displaced.
“If you look at the area under attack, it is a location that has FADAMA land for rice farms. It is a location that is very fertile for all types of crops, cereals or tubers.”
His claims were corroborated by Jerry who decried how hunger is turning some of the women to harlots.
“Some men lure our women. Some people even give up their daughters in marriage just to survive. It is happening here. Some women submit themselves to men just to keep body and soul together.
Some men make mockery of some of these women. They would say ‘Come carry una wife o. We don f….k them tire. It is a sad thing.
“Almost 40 per cent of the population of Logo is displaced. The people have deserted their homes.
“There are two internally displaced persons’ camps in Ayiin and Ugba. Some of the husbands of these women have been killed by herders.
“Some other husbands have gone out to hustle to get something to give to their wives and children.
“When you leave your wife and children without anything, what do you think they will resort to? Is it not harlotry to sustain themselves?”
The pangs of hunger and frustration brought about by herders’ attacks are also making life unbearable for Emmanuel, an Agatu based farmer.
“It is not easy for us to feed anymore,” he said. “As I am talking to you now, I don’t have anything at home.
“I tried as much as possible to pack some of my yams to Otukpo. I am just divided. I don’t know what to do.
“Should I go to Otukpo and stay or should I stay in Odugheho here? I am just contemplating.
“The cost of living in Otukpo is too high. I cannot even cope with it and I have children.
“I am not alone in this. There are so many other people like that in the community here. That is what we are facing.
“Right now as I am talking, some people are going to the farm to bring the small yam they have back home, because if they leave the yams in the farm, they will just consume them.
“The small one you plant, the herders will use their sword to dig into the ridge and remove it.”
Herders abduct, rape women
Aside attacks on farmers, embattled residents of Logo lamented that herders have been abducting and raping their women who are going about their legitimate businesses.
“The herders rape our women each time they catch them in the course of going to look for food. There are many cases of such.
“A lady resisted a herder recently. She was with her friend, and when she succeeded in taking the cutlass the herdsmen were wielding, she gave it to her friend who fearfully left the cutlass and ran away.
“While the lady who resisted the herder was trying to run away, the herder ran after her and hacked her to death.
According to Jerry, “rape is another evil they perpetrate because they don’t have wives here. The issue of rape is very rampant.
“Some of these women engage in fish business. They go to rivers and bring fish here to sell. These herders still go and block them on the way, beat them and collect their money. They even rape some of them.
“These have been happening every week. There are instances where they would kidnap women and keep them there for two to three days and they would even rape them.
“They demand a ransom of N1million and they pay before releasing them.”
The heinous acts in the view of Terkura are thriving because “our vigilante groups are incapacitated. Would they use Dane guns to confront people with sophisticated weapons?
“The herders even sometimes challenge the security men. They will tell them that ‘we will remove part of our ammunition and give it to you so that you can come and confront us’.
“If you meet these herders, they are using AK47 or other highly sophisticated weapons, and most of the weapons are brand new ones.”
Adu, the Agatu farmer, said they have been defenceless in the face of the attacks because the youths who used to confront the herders in their community have almost been wiped out by the gunmen.
“If you go to the farm in the morning, before 10 am, you must do whatever you want to do and leave, because if they come and meet you on the farm alone, they will just kill you.
“When the children go to school, they would return home before 9 am. Sometimes you prefer taking your children to farm than leaving them at home because you don’t know when the herders will come and attack the community.”
He further said: “When they (herders) get to our farms, they would dig out the yams for their cows. When we peel cassava and keep them on the ground to dry, they would come and consume them.
“Many children don’t go to school again for fear of being attacked by the herders. Even as parents we can’t send our children to school because we don’t know when they would come and attack our community.
“Yesterday (Wednesday), I was told that they killed one man on the farm in a community close to ours. They used their sword to open the stomach of the farmer after killing him.
“Since we have nobody to support us, you can be sure that in a few days from now the herders will come back here to terrorise us.”
Natives blame porous communities for attacks
Some of the respondents blamed the porous nature of the communities for the attacks.
“We have porous borders, and because of that, there is no way we can rest.
“The government will need to take decisive measures against these herders. If nothing urgent is done, nobody will be able to do anything this coming farming season.
“This is the time people start clearing farmlands preparatory to farming season. That is not possible now. Even the cassava that is left on the farm is being removed by the herders to feed their cows.
“We survive through farming, and if these attacks by herders are not controlled, there would be no food next season,” Jerry said.
To put an end to the crisis, he said: “We have had so many meetings with the herders but it all fell on deaf ears. You should know that arms intoxicate.
“If you are not supposed to be using arms and you are carrying them, it intoxicates. It makes you feel you can do anything with the life of anybody. If you are not a well-trained person, it can make you misbehave.”
On a regular basis, he said: “We see them in our farms carrying AK 47. At times, our security men will go after them and the herders will engage them in a shootout. I mean the soldiers and not the local vigilante group.
“Children in the rural areas have all moved to the urban centres. There is no single school left in our rural areas. If you cannot afford to take your children to schools in urban settlements, that will be the end of it. They can’t have access to education again.”
Terkura also bemoaned the nature of the terrain, saying: “The terrain is not good, but the herdsmen know it very well.
“There is a river in-between our community and Nasarawa State. They cross the river and come to our side.
“At the back of the river, there is a thick forest and places they can hide without being located. It is from there they come out very early around 3 am or 4 am and run back into the forest.
“When they bring the army to curtail them, they would either run to the other side or the army would refuse to go further into the forest to look for them.”
Most of the schools, especially primary schools in the area, according to him, have collapsed because “you can’t go near them. In Ayiin, the second biggest primary school is currently inhabited by refugees. The herders even burnt down some schools. Children cannot go back to these places. Children cannot even go to school on an empty stomach because they can’t concentrate, they can’t learn.”
Implications of attacks
A don and security expert, Dr Bala Husaini, has warned that the lingering crisis could have far reaching implications in the long run if drastic steps are not taken to curtail it.
“The implication of this is that it will continue to generate hatred among the people.
“In the area of economy, there would be food insecurity because people would no longer be interested in farming.
“Once people are not interested in farming, there would be shortage of food. This also has a bearing on the direct nature of the economy of the people not only in the Northcentral but in the Northwest.”
The failure of the crisis to abate, according to him, also tells the rest of the world that the government is incapable of addressing the challenges of insecurity in the country, “thereby causing the influx of new methods, new dimensions and new segments of other criminal groups coming in to take control of certain areas.
“This crisis displaces people from their original homelands to other host communities. When they move to those communities, the host may not accept them 100 per cent. If they reside there for the next 10 to 20 years, the issue of indigene/settler hegemony will crop up.”
For people that are being displaced daily and there is no measure to rehabilitate them, he said: “There will be a time when they will also turn out to be like the criminals who chased them out of their original land. These are some of the issues.”
He went on to say that what is happening in Benue could be categorised on three major issues. “One is politics. The second is farmers’/herders’ clash. The third is the influx of bandits, which is more or less of Boko Haram.
“With regard to politics, Benue had some issues before the farmers/herders clash. Historically, they were people who had never enjoyed anything you can call dividend of democracy.
“For them to survive, politicians want insecurity as an excuse to tell the rest of the world that they are doing what they are doing to justify the money that the state is getting.
“Naturally when there is anything that is disturbing people, their attention will be diverted to that thing that is disturbing them. Issues of salaries, issues of entitlement are less compared to the insecurity that is happening in that area.
“Some of the politicians are identified with these criminals, like Gana. Everybody knows that he was on time a very powerful somebody and was doing his things with the government of Benue State and some outsiders from the Fulani clan and the Hausa clan. They were the ones controlling the Northcentral.”
“Then the other issue is reprisal. You can’t hit a herder and ask him to just say bye-bye. Their three, four, five generations may likely revenge. Again there is this belief of the herders that for their cows to prosper, it must eat what does not belong to it. This is another aspect fueling the crisis in the Northcentral.”
Negligence of the law to take its course, he added, is another challenge. “It is not only the herders that are having this problem but the Tiv, the other tribe controlling the state including government officials that are fuelling these issues.
“Like I said earlier, herders don’t forgive. If you do them good, they will make sure that good remains for the next generations to come, and if you do bad to them, it will also remain for generations to come.
“The government should have adopted the strategy they are using in the Northeast against Boko Haram.”
We have over 1.5 million IDPS – Benue State Commissioner
Benue State Commissioner for Information, Mr Michael Inalegwu Umoru, says the farmer killed in Agatu was his elder brother, regretting that the herders’ attacks has left the state with over 1.5 million displaced people.
“It was my brother that was killed by herders in Agatu. They met him in the farm and shot him dead. That was about three weeks ago. We have over 1.5 million people in the IDP camps. It’s something that the state government has been battling to take care of them. The federal government is not doing anything to assist because of the relationship between the state and the federal.”
As at the time of speaking with our correspondent, the honourable commissioner said Agatu was peaceful.
“I have confirmed from Agatu that there was nothing like that. The only incident in Agatu was that some groups of boys went and stole some cows and livestokers apprehended them with their keke Napep. They are at the police station in Obagaji now. The only place that was attacked was a place in Apa. The herders butchered a farmer to death there.
“Meanwhile soldiers have taken over the place and they are doing clearance operations there now. The western part of Agatu was taken over by cows this afternoon. My contact in Logo has not confirmed whether there was an attack. The Attack in Logo was about four days ago. We have asked there should be another unit of Operation Wild Stroke to a village, Ayiin, so that they will work in synergy with the ones on ground before. That is the arrangement the government has made now. “
Efforts to speak with leaders of the herders were unsuccessful. The former spokesperson, Garus Galolo, said he had left the state. He promised to send contacts of the person authorized to speak for them but was yet to do so as at the time of filing this report.