Former senatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) of the Benue South Comrade Daniel Onjeh has expressed concerns over the tragic massacre in Yelwata, Guma Local Government Area of Benue State on Friday night.
According to reports, over 200 persons were brutally murdered in a coordinated attack allegedly carried out by militias.
Onjeh condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms and consoled the families and communities affected by the heinous crime, calling it a national emergency that demands urgent and holistic action.
He emphasised the Yelwata killings should not be mistaken for the often-cited farmers-herders conflict, asserting that such a narrative is now outdated and misleading.
“Do farmers still cultivate the soil in this era of unpredictable violence and mayhem? And do we still see genuine herders grazing in Benue?”Onjeh asked.
He added that the children killed in the massacre were students, not farmers, and they were murdered in their rooms, not on the farm, slugging it out with herders.
According to him, the people of Benue have long been displaced from their farmlands, and many herders have equally fled or ceased operations in the state due to the state government’s enforcement of its Anti-Open Grazing Law.
“Most of the cows you see around now,” he explained, “are for some sacred Benue Senior citizens who are flagrantly violating the Anti-Open grazing law.”
Therefore, he argued, there is no longer a basis for the continued framing of the conflict as one between herders and farmers.
Instead, the attacks are being perpetrated by criminal militias, both external and external and indigenous, who are often available for hire by political actors and heartless criminal masterminds.
Onjeh, a former Chairman of the Governing Board of PRODA, Enugu, reiterated his consistent stance against ethnic profiling, noting that while criminal elements exist in all ethnic groups, the pattern of violence in Benue State points to an organised militia with Fulani elements at the centre.
Read Also: Beyond reform: Next steps after Nigeria’s arbitration overhaul
He cautioned that referring to these actors as “herdsmen” dignifies their criminality and offers them a form of communal protection. “Let us make a clear distinction: calling them herdsmen grants them legitimacy and shields them behind a recognised trade. These are not herders; they are militias and available to the highest bidder,” he stated.
He urged President Bola Tinubu to see the Benue crisis through a broader and more nuanced lens.
While he acknowledged the President’s directive following the Yelwata massacre as a step in the right direction, he cautioned that such measures would remain superficial unless the root causes of the crisis are addressed.
These include political sabotage, militia infiltration, and land encroachment by armed groups.
Onjeh praised Governor Hyacinth Alia for his efforts to develop the state, noting that despite the insecurity, Alia’s administration has outperformed all previous ones in the Fourth Republic.
He alleged that a cabal of political actors within and outside Benue State has persistently sought to sabotage Alia’s administration—from attempts to hijack the State House of Assembly to influencing the National Assembly to block local government allocations.
These efforts, Onjeh claimed, were meant to destabilise governance and create room for political opportunism.
When these machinations failed, he said, the judiciary was targeted next in a bid to unseat duly elected APC local government chairmen to share state power and resources with the governor.
Though they attained partial success at the tribunal, principled judges at the appellate level restored order in the preservation of the dignity and sanctity of the judiciary in Benue State.
Frustrated, Onjeh alleged, these desperate elements have now turned to weaponising insecurity, using it as a final resort to break the will of the Alia administration and destabilise Benue with the view to eliciting the misapplication of the state of emergency rule. This situation will perpetually remain within the figment of their imagination without true expression in reality.
Onjeh also reacted to calls for self-defence by some stakeholders across the country, saying that at this point this appears inevitable as the people have been pushed to the wall.
However, he cautioned the FG to take urgent steps to stem the tides of insecurity in Nigeria to prevent a descent into anarchy because the people have run out of patience.
If this is not done, he argued, people will be forced to take up arms to defend themselves and this might plunge the nation into turmoil.
“While community policing and forest guards could bolster security, arming non-state actors is a recipe for long-term disaster and could ignite ethnic and religious crises across Nigeria,” Onjeh added.
To forestall that, he advocated for the full deployment of military resources, including surveillance and combat helicopters, across Benue and neighbouring states.
He also called for increased collaboration with traditional rulers, community leaders, and security agencies to address the root of the crisis.
He urged the President to extend military presence to all border areas of Benue State, particularly those bordering Nasarawa, Taraba, Enugu, Ebonyi, and Cross River States.
According to him, militias often retreat into neighbouring states after launching attacks in Benue, using these areas as operational bases, especially in Nasarawa state. This makes interstate and regional cooperation critical to restoring peace.
He stated that the establishment of a state police can go a long way to tackle insecurity in Nigeria as it will increase the number of security agents across the country and increase the area effectively policed.
He stated that the indigenous officers of state police forces know the land and people better, and working with other security agents, such as the proposed Forest Guards, they can help reduce the attacks on innocent rural communities.
Commenting on the recent protests in Makurdi following the Yelwata massacre, Onjeh acknowledged the genuine grief of the people but warned against infiltration, hijack and manipulation by political actors.
He cautioned that continued polarisation would only embolden the terrorists, who seek to spread fear and division. “Benue people must unite now more than ever. Insecurity thrives in disunity,” he said.
He further referenced the heroism of local police in Yelwata, who initially bravely repelled the attackers but were overwhelmed by their numbers.
He highlighted the dire shortage of security personnel in rural areas and called on the Federal Government to increase the number of security operatives in the state.
He also advocated for community hotlines and early warning systems to help quicken response times in the face of imminent attacks.
Onjeh called on members of the National Assembly to urgently pass laws that prescribe stiffer penalties for kidnapping, terrorism, and banditry. Extant laws on these crimes are mild on offenders, he said.
He questioned the suspicious timing of the attack, noting that it occurred less than 24 hours after a mammoth crowd in Makurdi publicly endorsed President Tinubu and Governor Alia for second terms. “Could this be more than a coincidence?” he asked.
“The current stance and statements attributed to Senator Abbah Moro in which he disparages Governor Alia ostensibly on account of the security situation in Benue State (which the APC inherited from PDP’s Governor Ortom) are mind-boggling,” Onjeh stated.
This is so because Senator Moro did not raise a finger when a worse situation persisted during Ortom’s tenure in which there were televised mass burials of victims of militia killings.
When there was a deadly, unprovoked attack on his community, Edumoga, he was alleged to have blamed the youths for killing cows and causing the brutal attack by Fulani militias.
“Today, though,”Onjeh stressed, “he has found it convenient to be at the vanguard of the vitriolic attacks on Governor Alia.” Such a stance by people like Senator Moro, he added, raises the question of whether or not this crisis is a consequence of the stiff political opposition confronting Governor Alia from within and (mostly) without Benue–Abuja in particular.
Onjeh urged the Federal Government to disregard propaganda aimed at painting Governor Alia as incompetent.
He reminded the nation that the Governor has no control over the armed forces or federal police, but has consistently provided operational support to security agencies.
He called for better coordination between state and federal actors and warned against pampering disgruntled politicians and their collaborators. He urged the “fumigation” of the political and traditional institutions within and outside the state to rid them of individuals allegedly complicit in the crisis.
“President Tinubu should take Governor Alia’s words seriously, especially if his committee on insecurity has made a sterling revelation about some political actors behind these attacks. The time for rhetoric has passed. This is a national emergency. The world is watching. Even the Pope has prayed for Benue over the Yelwata killings. The President must now act decisively and justly to restore peace in Benue State.”
