• Prevail on your husband to act on herdsmen attacks, Benue women beg First Lady

(Rose Ejembi – MAKURDI, with agency reports)

Benue state Governor, Samuel Ortom, has declared three days of mourning for those killed in herdsmen attacks in Logo and Guma Local Government Areas.

Ortom’s Chief Press Secretary, Terver Akase, said the the governor disclosed that the mourning period will commence from today and end on Thursday, with a church service for victims at the IBB Square in Makurdi, followed by mass burial.

He said flags will fly at half mast within the mourning period while work will close at 1:00pm today and tomorrow and Thursday, which is the day for the church service and burial of the victims, will be a work-free day in the state.

Elsewhere, Benue women asked the wife of the president, Aisha Buhari, to rise up as a mother and prevail on her husband to re-shape the country’s security architecture which would guarantee the safety of mothers and children in their homes.

The women, led by a former commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development in the state, Mrs. Elizabeth Apedzan, said they decided to troop out to mourn unarmed mothers and children killed by herdsmen.

Mrs. Apedzan stated that Benue women will not stop to cry until Buhari decides to do the needful by deploying adequate security in the state to avert further killings.

”We have asked him (president Buhari) to denounce his patronship of the Miyetti Allah,” she said.

Also, wife of Tor Sankara, Chief Mrs. Elizebath Shuluwa, called on the governor’s wife to lead a delegation of Benue women to the First Lady to speak to her husband to come to the aid of Benue women.

In a similar development, Commissioner of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Mr. James Anbua, has called for the arrest of a national coordinator of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN), Garus Gololo, for saying that Benue people were killed by herdsmen because 1000 cows were rustled.

Anbua, who made the call in Makurdi, yesterday, said there is no proof that the current killings in some rural areas of the state had any links with alleged rustling of cattle by locals. He described Gololo’s claim as a bunch of lies and propaganda.

“This is not the first time he would be doing this, he is used to lying. I urge security agencies to arrest him because he has to prove who and where those 1,000 cows were rustled,” Anbua said.

But,  Gololo is standing his ground that  aside the 1,000 cows ttaken away by some armed youths referred to as Livestock Guards, around the areas which bordered Nasarawa and Taraba states, 10 Fulani men (five youths and five children) were also abducted and that their whereabouts and those of the rustled animals were still unknown.

Meanwhile, Chairman of Guma Local Government Area, Anthony Shawon, has said the invasion of and killings in some villages in the council area has left a huge humanitarian and environmental crises that needs urgent intervention.

Shawon disclosed how Fulani herders, who invaded Saav, Mbadyen and Uvir villages on January1, retreated to the forest of Dogon Yashi, stretching from Guma to Logo, on the banks of the River Benue, covering over 57 kilometres.

He lamented the destruction of crops, farms and houses by the invaders, and added that survivors of the invasion have left their ancestral homes and are looking for shelter in nearby towns. He added that the state government has approved setting up of camps for the displaced persons but regretted that the few already established are overcrowded by the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

“The camps at Guma and Gbajimba are overcrowded, but the Benue State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) is already handling the situation because as a local government, the scale is beyond us.”

He regretted that the invaders, who were hiding in the Dogon Yashi forest, were still attacking villages, burning down houses and destroying crops and that the attackers are still destroying crops kept in farms such as soya beans, yams, guinea corn and rice.

“They are openly grazing on farms after which they set them on fire,” he alleged. The chairman, however, commended officers of the Nigerian Army for their quick intervention in quelling the crisis. He appealed to the army to enter the forest and dislodge the herders there.

He accused the Kabawa community in Guma of ferrying food to herdsmen in the forest in exchange for cattle.

Shawon, however, disclosed that the Kabawa people who carried food to the herders had been arrested by the police in Abinsi. He, however, regretted that the herdsmen were still carrying out open grazing in spite of the law.