The coalition of leaders in Benue State including Civil Society Groups, Religious Leaders and Concerned Professionals has passionately appealed to the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), and the European Union (EU) governments to intervene in the intractable hostilities visited on Benue State by suspected herdsmen terrorists to end what they called the ongoing ethnic cleansing and displacement of innocent citizens of the state and country at large.
The groups said the killings of the people which began since 2013, has seen over 6, 000 lives lost in armed herdsmen-led attacks, with last year (2024) alone recording over 200 killings in the first six months including mass atrocities in Guma, Kwande, Gwer-West, Agatu and Apa local government areas, and must be nipped in the bud.
Addressing an ‘international press conference’ in Makurdi, with 15 of the coalition leaders in attendance, the top leader of the coalition, Gideon Inyom, said the global appeal has become imperative due to the unending attacks and killings of innocent people and hence the need to draw the attention of the world to a silent war against our people. One that has displaced over 2 million individuals, according to the Benue State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA).
According to Gideon Inyom, the last straw that broke the coalition’s back is the latest killing of over 200 people in the Yelewata community in Guma local government area, which also displaced scores of residents.
“This is one too many deaths. One too many mass graves. It is on this final straw that we stand before the global community to say: Let this be the last.
“Our people have been chased from their ancestral homes. Their farmlands have been overrun. Their villages were reduced to ash. Their dignity stripped in overcrowded, makeshift IDP camps that offer neither food, nor safety, nor hope.
“These camps are not a refuge. They are open-air graveyards of dreams.
“Children are growing up without classrooms. Women are giving birth without clinics. Entire families are trapped in cycles of trauma and hunger, while the Nigerian state—both federal and sub-national—looks away, or worse, punishes those who resist annihilation”, he said.
He appealed to the global community “to grant emergency asylum, protected status to displaced people of the state as a humanitarian request grounded in: the 1951 Refugee Convention (principle of non-refoulement); Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the OAU Refugee Convention (1969), and; the Kampala Convention (2009) on the protection of IDPs in Africa.
The coalition’s leader maintained that Benue State is widely known as the Food Basket of the Nation—a land of fertile soil, rich culture, and resilient people, but its people are now under siege.
He described the intractable attacks as systematic, sustained and strategic, and “designed not just to displace, but to replace”, adding that until the citizens return to their ancestral homes in safety, dignity and freedom, the international community must act fast to preserve their lives.
𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗔𝗽𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗧𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗔𝘀 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽!
