In Benue, children are victims of continued attacks

In Benue, children are victims of continued attacks

The residents of Tior-Tyu Mbakor, a community in Tarka Local Government Area of Benue State, said they had no forewarning of the impending attack on the community on April 10. When gunshots rang out in the night, Msugh Iorver, 42, was already asleep.

His wife said she woke him up, and they both tried to run out of their home quickly. Dazed, Mr Iorver couldn’t run as fast. He was seized by the assailants and taken away. His decapitated body was found three days later.

“I hid in the bush till morning. I met other villagers who asked me that they learnt I was taken hostage by the Fulani with my husband, I said no,” Msurshima Iorver said. “Then today, their bodies were discovered in the bush — three persons.”

They had been married for over 10 years although they had no child. Mrs Iorver said her husband was kind and loving. Overwhelmed by grief, she wept as her husband was interred in a body-bag under the scorching sun behind their thatched mud house. The family said they had no money to buy a casket.

Dickson Anuma, who was also killed in the attack, had fled his native Tse-Alashi community in Guma Local Government Area of the state. Anthony Akosu, a survivor, said 32-year-old Mr Anuma moved to the community a month earlier after learning of a planned invasion of his home town by armed herders.

“In preparation for the farming season, following incessant attacks at Tse-Alashi by invaders, Dickson Anuma arrived at Tior-Tyu last month. Unfortunately, he was killed two days ago during the night invasion by herdsmen,” Mr Akosu said in April.

Gladys Okpara, a 45-year-old farmer and trader, said she miraculously escaped the attack with her four children. After being woken up by gunshots, she grabbed two of her younger children with the older ones tagging along as they ran into the bush where they stayed till dawn.

The police spokesperson in state, Sewuese Anene, said the attack was being investigated and that there have been more police deployment across communities in the state. She spoke a day after Tior-Tyu residents blocked the Makurdi-Gboko highway in protest over the killings.

“The young people at Tior-Tyu told us that there is a route at River Benue that people can come to attack. They believed that is the route the attackers used,” she said.

She dismissed the dominant narrative of reprisal attacks by invaders. “We did not receive any information about any one rustled cattle anywhere. But if that is, is that the reason to take lives?” she wondered.

Governor Samuel Ortom said similar attacks in the state were carried out by herders and defended his call on residents to defend themselves. The governor said the federal government had abdicated its responsibility of providing security for the people, and his call on residents to defend themselves was based on the “helplessness of security agencies to protect citizens who are being mowed to death.”

Benue, in Nigeria’s middle belt region, has witnessed violent attacks in recent years, many of them attacks between armed herders and indigenous communities. Perhaps the worst incident in the last seven years occurred in February 2016 in Agatu LGA where armed herders killed over 500 villagers and displaced about 7000. Residents said the figure was more.

A leader of the Gan Allah Fulani Association, Saleh Bayeri, one of the pastoralists’ groups often accused in the attacks, said at the time that the bloody raid was a reprisal attack against the Agatus whom he accused of killing, in 2013, a prominent Fulani.

From Tarka to Logo, Jato-Aka, Kwande and Katsina-Ala, hundreds of kilometres from Makurdi, violent attacks persisted over the years as the governments struggled to contain them. In May 2021,it was reported how over 100 persons were massacred and many others rendered homeless in Katsina-Ala LGA of the state.

Things seemed to have improved in recent months. But residents and local officials say deadly attacks have continued, unreported. The Tior-Tyu attack in April is one of the most recent incidents. As with similar attacks in the past, many children were affected.

The farming community, known for its yam and rice farming, is located along the Makurdi-Gboko highway, 20 kilometres from Makurdi, the state capital. Previous attacks left the community largely deserted. During a recent visit, there were only a few residents and security personnel in the area.

The April 10 attack started at about 11 p.m. and 15 people were killed that Monday, residents said. As families grieved over the gruesome killing of their loved ones, the injured, many of them children, were taken to the Benue State University Teaching Hospital in Makurdi.

According to a source , two-year-old Comfort Iorshe and Doobee Iorhon, seven, were fighting for their lives. Comfort was shot alongside her father, Samuel Iorshe. Her mother, Faith Iorshe, said her 35-year-old husband was hit in his lower abdomen, and the exiting bullet shattered their daughter’s thighs.

Seven-year-old Doobee Iorhon with her shattered jaws at the Benue State University Teaching Hospital, Makurdi.

“The father, Samuel Iorshe had held her in the bid to flee when the attackers’ bullet hit his lower abdomen, killing him. Comfort was shot in the thighs with the bullet tearing her genital,” Mrs Iorshe said while fanning the injured toddler as she lay sleeping at the accident and emergency ward of the teaching hospital.

Doobee survived miraculously after the attackers shot her in the back of her neck, tearing her left jaw, her uncle, Vershima Iorhon, who cared for the girl at the hospital, said.

Four-month-old Fanen Chen has been deprived of breast milk after the marauders shot her 25-year-old mother, Lydia in her breasts during the night attack at Tior-Tyu. Mrs Chen’s fingers were ripped apart as she tried to shield her daughter from the gun-toting attackers.

“It was about to rain when the attackers stormed our village. Then they began shooting. So, I tried to run with my baby, they shot at us injuring me on my breasts and fingers, because I wanted to protect my baby,” Mrs Chen said.

“I was crying and calling for help, but the herdsmen kept hitting me with sticks after I fell down with my child. Now, I cannot breastfeed my baby as a result of the injuries — we are both starving,” the distraught mother narrated.

At Anyiin in Logo Local Government Areas, seven-year-old Linus Akpe and his three younger siblings– Doofan, Terver and Aondona are sheltering at an internally displaced persons camp.

Their mother, Rebecca, recounted how armed invaders killed her husband — Raphael Akpe on his farm in April 2021. “The attack of April last year, led us to the IDPs camp here at Anyiin,” Mrs Akpe said.

“Now, all four of my children are out of school because their father was killed on his farm, and he was our breadwinner,” the widow said.

Renewed Attacks

Most local government areas of Benue have been affected by violence that has gripped the state for years. Areas like Katsina-Ala, Ukum, Kwande and Logo, which lies at the boundary between Nasarawa and Taraba States, have been some of the most hit.

Kundushima Akaa, former vice chairman of Logo LGA, said the attacks have not abated due to ineffective policing of rural communities. He blamed the shoddy implementation of the Open Grazing and Ranching Establishment Law in the state to the spate of attacks.

As someone who lost members of his family to the attacks, Mr Akaa said when cows are impounded by Livestock Guards for violating the anti-open grazing law, the communities within the area of the arrest become vulnerable to attacks by the armed herdsmen.

Grace Igbabon, the local government chairperson of Gwer West, said the attacks have created a lot of humanitarian problems for Gwer-West, her local government area.

The scale of the humanitarian crisis has seen thousands living for years as displaced persons in schools and camps with little adequate support from the authorities.

“A lot of people have been displaced. They have no homes. They are occupying schools as IDP camps. It has affected education because the schools no longer have enough spaces to carry students,” Mrs Igbabon said.

“The people too are not going to their farms, as those who manage to sneak to their villages to get food are ambushed and killed.”

Gladys Okpara, survivor of the Tior-Tyu attack narrates her ordeals.

Gladys Okpara, survivor of the Tior-Tyu attack narrates her ordeals.

The secretary, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN), Benue State chapter, Galma Ibrahim, denied that Fulani herdsmen were unleashing violence on farming communities in the state.

“I will not accept those allegations, because unknown criminal elements are the ones responsible for such attacks,” he told our correspondent in a telephone interview.

“Usually, when cows are impounded, the communities where the arrests were made often get scared of reprisals, and abandon their homes. Then some of the farmers themselves move in and begin to cause havoc.”

Governor Ortom disagreed. “Since 2017, over 100 security operatives have been killed by the marauding herdsmen,” Mr Ortom said.

“Therefore, the people are right by saying they would defend themselves. And I will support them.”

Displaced persons abandoned

The displacements caused by the attacks on rural communities across the state have brought unimaginable misery and hardships to the people, Emmanuel Shior, the Executive Secretary of the State Emergency Management Agency.

“People are being killed on a daily basis; the locations of the IDPs are dangerous,” he said.

He said the federal government has failed to assist in dealing with the humanitarian crisis in the state.

“We have an IDPs population of over 1.5 million, but the Federal Government doesn’t talk about it. The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs doesn’t talk about it.

“The problem of IDPs in Benue should be the responsibility of the Federal Government,” Mr Shior said.

“The population of the IDPs portends a big security problem; they are just there, vulnerable; ready to be used by anybody. Their sources of livelihoods have been destroyed, they are waiting for anybody that brings handouts to them,” he said.

At the Anyiin IDP Camp, 100 metres away from the family home of Gabriel Suswam, a former governor of the state and a current senator, Utim MsughAondo, a displaced person, said, attackers cross River Benue from Nasarawa to destroy farms.

He has been at the camp since his community was attacked in 2018. Mr MsughAondo coordinates the camp’s daily operations. The facility holds 487 households with a population of 3, 409 persons.

Over time, he said their stay at the camp has become increasingly unbearable.

“We are only staying here because there are armed herdsmen in our communities. That is what is hindering us from going back home,” he said. “Let the government arrest and prosecute the armed Fulani herdsmen, so that we can have access to where we buried our ancestors.”

Samson Akpi, another displaced person, said, “We are no longer comfortable here. If at the end of this year, the government does not take us home, we better go and be killed in our homes. Our living condition is bad.”

At the Lower Benue River Basin Development Authority in Jato Aka, Kwande LGA, 60-year-old Iwanger Dazua, who fled Mbakyaai with her father and four children, after the community came under a midnight attack in October 2019, said their community has since been taken over by the invaders.

When her father died in early 2021, they could not take the body back to his ancestral home. “At Debam, in Môôn Council Ward, you dare not go near because armed Fulani herders displaced people and have built their own homes,” she said.