Benue: These criminals are bigger than us

“Since Sunday morning, low-flying military aircraft have been observed hovering over Makurdi, as well as parts of neighbouring Guma and Gwer West LGAS. The air surveillance is to monitor the situation of things around Makurdi and environs, so we will know how to tackle it swifly.”

THIS quote is from a reputable Nigerian media platform on Monday. The military has not refuted it. Indeed, by Sunday evening, the world was talking about the ‘swift response’ of the Nigerian military and police to disperse protesters with teargas. Did I hear you mutter ‘city policing’? I am shaking my head in embarrassment. Those Makurdi protesters were holding placards and wearing black and the army deployed military aircraft. I can imagine them in their most intimidating kits strutting like King Kongs and bellowing at women. Very laughable and embarrassing.

Let us dial back a little, a few days. Imagine four or six military aircraft hovering over Yelwata community last week when the police and the army got intelligence report that trouble was brewing. Imagine convoys of intimidating officers in fatigues parading those communities that today lay waste and wasted. Would we be mourning and protesting? Would Benue be on Al-Jazeera and BBC for this shameful news? Should this be the Pope’s first intervention on Nigeria, this mass of festival of pain and bereavement?

Perhaps our security operatives and their agencies didn’t know the deaths were coming. Maybe they did not get the memo. Maybe they did not read the intelligence reports? Maybe this is the first time our security agencies are seeing attacks in the night, homes going up in flames and villages disappearing altogether in the dead of the night. Maybe it didn’t happen in Plateau and the entire North East Nigeria. There are no files on what had happened before to guide against them happening again?

Now seven families, whole families have been wiped out. We are still counting.

Whatever happened in our intelligence circles, concerning Benue, should not have happened, sadly. We could and should have done better. Now we are burying children, digging graves and shedding tears that we could have prevented. Benue has successfully moved from being the food basket to being a state of blood and tears. Nigeria has failed, once again, to protect her children, her, pregnant women, the aged and the farmers who feed her.

Why are we specialists in putting the cart before the horse here? Do we do it intentionally or we are just totally incapable of securing our people? Just pause and look at what we always do before and after our festivals of blood.

On June 4, the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant-General Olufemi Oluyede temporarily relocated to Benue State to oversee military operations following the death of almost 300 people in armed attacks. The killers ignored his arrival and presence and increased the tally by more than 100. Don’t ask me the number of times our  various COAS at different times have relocated to different states ‘to oversee operations’. I have lost count. All I can see, like you, are rivers of blood and tons of truncated destinies. Maybe the killers too know the routine and are no longer impressed. They just do their thing and go back to the hills where our soldiers and policemen cannot climb. Maybe they just see our actions as political movements, nothing to worry about!! 

As soon as we finish counting, auditing and editing the number of those who die, what do we do? The media statements of condolence, condemnation, assurance and empty promises follow. The other political parties will condemn ‘in strong terms’ the massacre. The federal government will promise to bring the ‘culprits of the dastardly acts to book and restore peace’.  Some people have even made it their responsibility to count the minutes between the corpse-audit and condolence visit so they can call out on social media the governor or the president for not visiting or mourning with the bereaved families.

Excuse me, can we shift from the predictable political movements and rhetorics to tangible, touchable movements? When are we going to stop being pawns in the hands of criminals? Oh, or is it that this thing is bigger than us, all of us, government, army, all 250 million-plus Nigerians? Gosh, I think I will answer the last question in the affirmative.

These criminal herdsmen and bandits are bigger than us. Let us just throw up our hands and admit it. We cannot rear cows without getting killed. We cannot convince herdsmen that their cattle-rearing is a business, not a cultural marathon in the forest. We cannot build ranches or get herdsmen to stay on their side of the lane. We cannot arrest cattle rustlers and prosecute them. We cannot arrest criminal farmers or bandit cattle boys and show that nobody is more powerful than the state. We just have statements for everything, statements that we re-jig, change a few words and sign with flourish, impotent flourish. We have issued those statements again which means nothing has changed. We are just waiting for the next massacre so that we can whisk out a revised statement. It is exhausting. It is annoying. Why the heck are criminals more powerful than the Nigerian state? Why?

Okay, can we just get Israeli and Iranian mercenaries to help us out already? At least, those ones fight promptly, devastatingly back at any aggression against their sovereignty. The Benue bandits are stripping us of our sovereignty. They have reduced a whole governor to personal television appearances to explain himself. We are lame, tame and crippled. Those goons hiding in the forest know it too. They knew they would away with wiping out families and burning children while they slept. They know we will make noise, plenty of noise for a few days and then move on. I dare Governor Alia of Benue State, the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun,and the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt-Gen Femi Oluyede to actually make arrests, prosecute and follow the process through until we hear prison doors clang shut after the criminals. I promise to come back here and eat my words. But I doubt any of that will happen. Why? Because when Plateau state was burning in 2010, I wrote this:

“Once again, suspects have been arrested, about 200 of them. They have owned up that they were sponsored.”

Don’t ask me if they went to jail or if their sponsors did. All that we know is between December and February 2023, Amnesty International reported that 1,336 people, including 533 women, 263 children and 540 men were killed in Bokkos and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas. Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) said more than 2,000 lives have been lost in Plateau between 2020 and 2025 (that is in just five years) making it one of the deadliest zones outside of ‘insurgency-wracked Northeast’ Nigeria. Benue is working hard to overtake Plateau.

Who do we turn to? Where should Benue people run to? I heard the killers are paid as little as N30,000 to be part of the squad. And Nigeria is too poor, in every way, to match 30k in intelligence and arrest and prosecution. We cannot arrest cattle rustlers and killers of farmers. We can only speak English.

Let me just end this with a few adapted lines of prayer from my article, God, did you create Plateau State? It was published in the Sunday Sun of March 14, 2010 and on page 35 of my book, Conversations with my country.

“Almighty God, are you still the God our fathers served?

Then the mothers in this land ask you this minute to send the Angel of Death into the camps, houses, meetings and hiding places of the men who have thrown this  nation into mourning again.

Oh God, relocate them from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Let sudden death come upon them.

The men who paid killers to roast Benue families and breadwinners in their sleep, God make them like snails crushed by a speeding car. Like a stillborn child, may they not see the sun.

Those who provided weapons that killed innocent children, let their own children become wandering beggars, their wives widows.

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May another take their places of  leadership. Because they have hounded to death the poor and the needy, let their prayers condemn them.

Let their names be blotted out from among the living.

Arise Lord, with everything that makes you God, and do unto those conspiring to use human lives to prove political points what you did in the days of old to proud men who dared you. Let them die spectacular deaths in public.

“Let them experience the pain of sudden losses before they die.”

It is only God we can turn to right now. So, God, give Benue aid against those who have turned the state into a killing field, for the help of man has been worthless, so far.