The spectre of violence haunting Benue State in central Nigeria since January 2016 is far from receding as eleven new persons have been reported killed in a new year onslaught. The site of violence this time is Anwase Village in the border town of Abande in Kwande Local Government Area of the state where the fierce battle took place, leaving eleven dead in a resurrection of herder – farmer violence. Immigration control post at Imande -Avur has been reported to have been completely burnt down in Abande aside from two badly lacerated corpses already evacuated from the scene by locals for burial. Others are reportedly still missing.
Benue State governor, Rev Fr Hyacinth Alia
Benue has witnessed this sort of violence every year since 2016 when Agatu was the inaugural trial of strength. But while Agatu and subsequent ones have been between Nigerian herders and farmers, this time it is at the contiguous border town of Abande with the Republic of Cameroons.
Intervention learnt from impeccable sources that herders came across the border with cattle and sophisticated arms to graze on the farm land of locals. An attempt to forestall grazing on the land degenerated into violence in which the eleven victims have perished.
It is still not clear to which side the eleven known victims so far belong. They are in all likelihood Nigerians since the report available to Intervention shows the burning down of the Nigerian Immigration Service in Kwande LGA.
The Benue State Government has confirmed this development. The adviser on security to the state governor, Colonel Ashungu (rtd) disclosed that “Operation Whirl stroke” – the special forces established to deal with such emergencies, has got the distress call. Intervention learnt reliably at 2 pm Thursday that a joint team of police, army and other ears and eyes of the Nigerian State was on its way to the site of escalation.
Senator George Akume and Mr. Ortom, Gov Alia’s predecessors, none of whom is reportedly on talking terms with the other and could thus be complicit in Benue’s ‘everywhere wars’ of rancour and tit for tat!
Zaki Biam, a yam production hub in Katsina Ala LGA, was the site of Christmas eve violence in the state. That was, however, not a herder- farmer test of strength but what has been dubbed in some quarters as “struggle for supremacy amongst armed locals”.
Intervention has been told that heavily armed local armed groups is a common insecurity feature in many communities across Benue State. Sources spoke of communities policemen and even troops dare not reach, either to effect arrest or in response to distress calls.
Capture of rural areas by unlawful actors is always a frightening insecurity signal because it has always been the first phase to collapse of central authority. Why it has persisted in Nigeria without corresponding national mobilisation is what is baffling. It has been all quiet from the national security establishment obviously because it believes it can contain it without citizens action. It runs a big risk in that because the security establishment should never combine professionalism with political judgement in threat analysis. The reason for that in most countries is because security establishments have an offense – defense mentality in accordance with their professional training. The end result is always that security establishments end up redefining insecurity challenges. That is how we get the phenomenon of war economy, for example.
But it is also possible that professional security operatives have been left to use their own discretion by the reigning political leadership who themselves may not appreciate why the military establishment is necessarily led by a civilian Commander-in-Chief. that title is not for the fun of it.
Whichever is the case, the scale of insecurity in Nigeria, from domestic violence to insurgency, banditry, terrorism, ‘baby factories’ and violent conflicts, will not just go away without a deep rethinking of the strategies of containment.
