Pushed to the wall by unrelenting massacres of Benue indigenes by armed Fulani militia over the years, State Governor, Samuel Ortom, has established a security outfit to assist relevant conventional agencies in tackling the challenge.
The Governor unveiled the outfit on Thursday, August 4, 2022, during the passing out parade of the first batch of 500 personnel of the Benue State Community Volunteer Guards at the IBB Square, Makurdi.
Ortom stated that the sustained attacks since 2011 have claimed more than 5,000 lives in the state.
From media reports, the attacks in Guma and Logo local government areas on New Year Day in 2018 left more than 100 dead with 73 bodies given state mass burial in Makurdi on 11th January of that year.
In March of the same year 26 victims, including women and children, of attacks on Omusu community of Edumoga in Okpokwu local government were given mass burial.
On Monday, 24th April, 2018, 17 parishioners including two priests, Reverend Fathers Joseph Gôr and Felix Tyolaha were murdered at their morning mass at Ukpor-Mbalom in Gwer local government area.
In Kwande and Agatu local government areas of the state mass burials have been too numerous to list.
There have also been attempts on the lives of Benue State Governors with Gabriel Suswam barely escaping in 2013 in Guma, and Samuel Ortom running for his life at Tyo-Mu, Makurdi local government area in 2021.
The report of an investigation conducted by a panel set up by the Bureau for local government and chieftaincy affairs in the state revealed that as at 2015 more than N90 billion worth of property had been destroyed across the state by the Fulani militia in a well coordinated and executive scorched earth policy.
In 2021 Governor Ortom disclosed that the destruction was estimated at over N400 billion.
Currently, Benue State has more than 1, 500,000 displaced persons living in deplorable makeshift camps and wherever they can find refuge across the state, says Governor Ortom.
After he signed the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law 2017 on May 22nd of that year, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore declared public opposition to the law stating that the crises in the Benue Valley was a struggle for natural resources.
They vowed to mobilize Fulani militia across the world to attack the state which they eventually did as stated in some of the attacks listed above.
Governor Ortom had reported the threats to the Presidency through personal visits and numerous letters which were not replied.
Meanwhile, the Fulani Nationality Movement issued press statements declaring Jihad on Nigeria, particularly Benue State for what it described as the people’s recalcitrance since the 1804 Jihad.
A 2015 World Terrorism Index report ranked Fulani militia as the fourth most deadly in the world.
Rather than perform its constitutional role of protecting Nigerian lives and property the Presidency has exhibited open support for the Fulani conquest and occupation agenda.
In the aftermath of the 2018 New Year genocide President Muhammadu Buhari admonished Governor Ortom and the high-powered delegation he led to visit him “to learn to live with their neighbors.”
Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina later cautioned citizens, in a media chat, to choose between ancestral lands and their lives. Prominent Federal Government officials have made public statements of overt support for the Fulani conquest and occupation agenda.
Moreover several Federal Government policies such as Ruga, gazetted cattle routes and the Water Resources bill amplify rather than abate fears of an exclusive occupation agenda.
In an open letter to the President dated 8th February, 2021, Governor Ortom had called on President Buhari to act before Fulani herdsmen plunge Nigeria into war. Again, the letter fell on deaf ears.
This is the context in which the Benue State Security outfit has been born.
An investigation conducted by Thisday newspaper in 2020 revealed that 23 states in the country were operating local security outfits.
The most prominent of these outfits is Amotekun established on 9th January 2020 by the six South-West states of Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti.
Mixed reactions followed Governor Ortom’s unveiling.
The Benue State Peoples Democratic Party in a statement said “the party sees the step as inevitable where the national security architecture under the control of the federal government has proven inadequate to guarantee protection of the lives and properties of citizens in the state from criminals and terrorists.”
The All Progressives Congress, APC, said it viewed with “a lot of suspicion, the sudden flaunting of a security outfit by Governor Samuel Ortom at the wee hours of his administration.”
The Tiv Youth Organization, TYO, maintained that “since conventional security seems either compromised or unable to combat and contain these terrorists, community vigilance is drafted in to offer support. This is exactly what was instituted in Benue State by the government of the day.”