By Amos Aar
FROM the very day Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State lost his senatorial bid to Dr Titus Zam of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on February 25, 2023, the cyberspace has been awash with intimidating posts of celebrations by Fulani herdsmen alleged to be regrouping to launch attacks on Benue communities to take over the state.
Such posts believed to be emanating from members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), tend to push the notion that Fulani herdsmen will invade, kill people and take over their ancestral lands as Ortom, seen to be the defender of the Benue Valley is no more politically relevant having lost his Senate bid, where he would have been primed to speak in defence of Benue.
Although not oblivious of Ortom’s efforts to protect the territorial integrity of his state from external aggression, it’s noteworthy to point out however that, Benue killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen predated Ortom’s administration going as far back as 2012.
The killings only continued under Ortom’s administration and it’s unfortunately likely to continue after his administration, if collective and strategic efforts are not made by people of the state and the government both at the federal and state levels.
Between 2013 and 2014, before Ortom became governor in 2015, almost all mortuaries in Tivland, especially from the MINDA Tiv political axis, were filled with corpses of people killed by alleged Fulani herdsmen. Perturbed by these tragic incidents, the state government announced that people should be burying their relatives immediately within that period because there were no more spaces in the morgues to keep corpses in order to give them traditionally befitting burials when the crisis would have abated.
The Suswam-led administration went ahead to set up a reconciliatory/peace committee headed by a former military governor of the state, Brigadier General Atom Kpera (rtd), to foster peace between herders and farmers in order to quell the killings. The Atom Kpera committee resolved that the Fulanis should be allowed to live in Benue State but they should not cause trouble so that peace would reign. Despite this resolve, suspected herdsmen continued to maim, rape women and kill people in their homes and on their farms.
It was this spate of violence that prompted Governor Ortom’s administration to introduce the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law, 2017 to end the lingering crisis. Yet, the killings still continued. It therefore means that killings have become endemic with Benue, and may continue beyond Ortom’s leadership, if God does not intercede. In other words, the alleged ongoing killings may not be as a result of Ortom’s loss at the polls.
Regrettably, it appears PDP members and Ortom’s supporters are wishing that the massacre of Benue people may continue to linger so that they will use it mock the people for rejecting Ortom at the polls.
Many are now pushing the argument that after all, these killings may be politically motivated, where those who lose out in political contests collude with killers to wreak havoc on communities!
Already, several attacks by ‘herdsmen’ have been reported after Saturday’s elections in different communities including Tse Fela in Mbabuande and Tse Akyegh in Ikaaghev Council Ward of Gwer-West LGA where seven people were said to have been killed including a livestock guard commander. Tyulen, Dudu and Agasha communities in Guma LGA as well as Anwase in Kwande LGA have also been attacked and close to 20 persons have been reported killed with food banks destroyed.
The PDP State Publicity Secretary, Mr Bemgba Iortyom, like many others from the party, posted on Facebook three days after Ortom’s defeat that, “Fulani in Doma, Awe, Keana, Obi in Nasarawa State celebrating Ortom’s Senate loss like mad. They are laughing at Tiv’s ‘mumuness”.
Tivta Samuel, a PDP social media influencer, posted on his timeline with a smiling emoji that, “immediately the herdsmen heard that their party APC has won the election, they moved in full force to complete their conquest mission in Benue State.
Kwande and Gwer-West are under heavy attacks at the moment😆”.
The above social media posts are just a few from many.
These social media insinuations, naturally draw some logical questions – one, if Fulani herdsmen are in jubilation that they will take over Benue State because Ortom is not made a senator, does it imply that they believed Ortom would remain governor forever or did they think Ortom was going to be in control of Benue affairs at the senate and so he would be the only person to sustain the Anti-Open Grazing Law enacted by the state Assembly? Is Ortom still not governor and were the killings not happening under his administration before? If herdsmen kill Benue people before and during the administration of Ortom, why should they continue when people said to be friends with Fulani are the ones taking over from him? These and many other questions beg for answers.
It could be recalled that when a Tiv criminal kingpin, Terwase Akwaza alias Gana, was killed by the military in 2020, Tiv people said the Fulanis were cerebrating at Wukari in Taraba State and other places, that they would kill everybody in Benue and takeover the state unhindered because Gana was believed to be their Chief Security Officer against external aggression at that time. But three years after Gana’s death, people are still living in Benue and the state is not taken over by Fulani.
Let it be known that, although people were being killed in every part of Benue State, they refused to vote Ortom not on the basis of the fact that he could not protect them and so they needed another Messiah on that ground. They refused to vote him because he was owing local government pensioners for 74 months and starved pensioners for 35 months. He was also owing civil servants for several months.
National Record gathered that salary arrears of some workers have accumulated for almost a year. That was Ortom’s biggest infraction against Benue people with marginal infrastructure projects being commissioned at the twilight of his administration after eight years of propaganda.
Ortom’s major nemesis is because his senatorial district, Benue North-West, is highly cosmopolitan. It comprises Makurdi, the state capital, Gboko, Tiv traditional headquarters and many other suburban towns, with residents who are mainly workers – either state or local government employees – who while exercising their franchise do not necessarily need to travel to their various senatorial districts to vote. As a result of this, people from across the state had opportunity to stop Ortom’s senatorial ambition in vengeance of his maltreatment of workers.
Whether the killings in Benue solely arise out of herdsmen quest to conquer Benue or politically motivated, or perceived vengeance against Ortom’s anti-open grazing law, the next four years of post-Ortom leadership will tell.
