By Chiangi Avese
The Benue State community is made up majorly of three groups: the rural populace, the civil servants and the political class.
The rural populace of any of the six tribes indigenous in the state, Tiv, Idoma, Igede, Ufia, Agatu, Etulo and Nifon depends heavily on farming/fishing to eke out their daily living. To this group, the most important raw materials for their livelihood is the land and rivers in the state.
In Benue State, and in recent years, the rural areas, populated by peasant farming/fishing communities whose dependent on land is from ages have had to live in fear of marauding killer Fulani herdsmen. The herdsmen were believed to be imported by their Nigerian relatives into the country to dispossess locals of their ancestral lands, attack and kill at little provocation. The rural dwellers have become an endangered specie.
Herdsmen, initially of the core northern origin, who, over the years, used to sojourned down to the Benue valley during the dry season to feed their herds are now torn in the flesh of their former host. These same people want the lands for keeps, and in their quest for that, brood no descent. A challenge to their uncanny desire is met with instant death outrightly.
The imported Fulanis come with trained fighters recruited from other troubled sub-Saharan African states in tow. The mission is to enable a clinical prosecution of their agenda of taking over of land from other nationalities.
The herders’ now wants to be recognized as indigenes in their host states. The titles to swathes of lands of their choice in those states and demand that no one raises an eyebrow. This quest has no room for consultation with the locals and tolerates no descent. In fact, a semblance of descent qualifies anyone or a community to die or be wiped out.
The herders’, believed to be working for and sponsored by the litany of retired military generals up north, the avalanche of retired senior civil servants, captains of industries and the northern ever so influential aristocracy carries sophisticated arms with which they use to kill at the slightest provocation.
Political gladiators from the north say the herders’ carry arms, an act is forbidden by law in Nigeria, to defend themselves. In their eyes, the acts of the killer herders’ is nothing wrong.
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Worrisome is the new trend that, In each planting season, the herders’ arrives in frightening increasing number. Their mission to dislodge the peasant farmers from their ancestral land is carried out in genocide-like killings. Cultural sites are desecrated and destroyed. Landmarks changed with the intention to set up a rule that recognizes their culture.
In the last three years, a dimension has been added to the known atrocities of the Fulani Herdsmen. Destruction of crops in budding stages. Germinating yams were removed by the herders and fed to the cows. They take the herds into fields where groundnuts, rice, millet and maize are planted to destroy while they stand guard with AK47 rifles. The idea is to send a message that they owned the land.
In IDP camps, the wails of the poor rural farmers, who though very poor, could hitherto fend for themselves and their families, but now, who lives on rationed meals in continual lessened quantity is getting no impact from the federal government.
Only recently, Abagana IDPs camp, one of the known two IDPs camps on Lafia road, just at the outskirts of Makurdi, the Benue State capital was attacked. According to a police report, at least seven persons were feared dead. Instead of an action to stop the ugly act, blames were, unfortunately, traded.
Gov. Samuel Ortom entered the scene in 2015 when he won the governorship election that year. Before that, he got into the federal executive council from the then PDP’s management slot. He was the party’s national auditor, a one-time local council chairman, and had served as party manager in different parties, at different times and capacities at the state level.
While the political class who relies on the votes of the rural poor to get to power, rejoiced in their misfortunes, abandoning them to their fate in the hands of the Fulani militia, Gov. Ortom rose to the occasion. He initiated the moves which culminated into the law by the State House of Assembly prohibiting open grazing in the state.
At a time, the state had over five IDP camps in which, at least, twenty thousand persons took refuge. When federal assistance was not forthcoming, the state IGR and part of federal allocation to the state was been used to take care of the displaced persons.
This action was acknowledged by the rural poor in 2019 when they rejected entreaties by the high and mighty to abandon Ortom. They teamed up to helped secure a second term for him against Bar. Emmanuel Jime who was heard at different fora promising to take another look at the anti-open grazing law with a view to reviewing it.
Gov. Samuel Ortom’s stand with the farmers is understandable. He comes from Guma, a local government at the fringes of the state bordering Nassarawa state. The neighbouring state is a launching pad to the numerous atrocious acts of the Fulanis and their militia against Agatu, Guma, Makurdi, Logo, Gwer-West and Gwer-East local government councils.
Killings in these areas had become recurrent. The Security agencies are first; handicapped sometimes, because of the remoteness of the locations of the attacks and lack of communication. Second, when the security agencies get to hear about the attacks, orders for action is either deliberately delayed or outrightly denied.
Ortom’s condemnation of the attacks, his nonconformist posture to the federal government’s insistence that the anti-open grazing law is repealed, his persistent calls for the arrest of Fulani socio-cultural organization leaders, always claiming responsibility for attacks on the Benue rural communities, has warmed him to this group of the state community.
The poor rural dwellers who have nothing but their ancestral lands to bequeath their children think Ortom is their equivalent of the biblical Gideon sent by God to deliver the Israelites against the marauding Medianites, (Judges 6:1-10). They call him “Nyakume, or the mighty man of valour, of Nzorov”. The peasant farmers in the rural areas think the world about Gov. Samuel Ioraer Ortom.
The next group is the civil servants. They are the middle class of the state. Since its creation in 1976, Benue State have had the misfortune of vacillating in the hands of all comers with little or no clear cut ideas for development.
The exception is made of the first civilian governor, Chief Aper Aku who architected and implemented an industrialization policy for the state.
Benue State has a civil service population that is less than sixty thousand persons. The population of the rural poor is over four million strong and lives in remote corners of the state which needs and requires development or at least, opening up.
The lack of development in the rural communities further impoverished the people making them eternally dependent on the civil servants. The Senior civil servants who have a vice-like hold on government and the rural population by their advantageous position opionates for the two sides in adulation.
The civil servant’s salary at the end of the month is not just a reward for work done, it confers status on them in the social circles. It places him a notch over the non-salary earners and gives them some kind of importance. They cherish that, and in the 35 years of service they hope, their salaries come unhindered months after months.
The peasants could wail at the top of the mountain for their misfortunes in the hands of the Fulani militia, the civil servants’ wants their pay anyway. They hold Gov. Ortom in contempt for the delay in payment of salaries as at when due, arrears and other perquisites incidental to them. Whatever happens, the civil servants want their salaries and pronto. Or else, the Ortom government is unempathic, not sympathetic and thus, not labour friendly.
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Expenses of government pass through their fingers. They know what comes in and goes out, and for what purpose. Expenditures on the larger masses which is the poor rural people have been deemed a diversion. Rumour mills are fed, and Ortom painted in the black colour. He is sold to the rural poor as the worse governor ever in the state. Only the rural farming/fishing poor knows better.
The smallest, but most powerful of the three groups that make up the Benue state community is the political class.
This group enjoys the advantage of the caucus, even if deemed diabolical. They know what is available and decides who gets what, and at the time they deem appropriate.
Like God, the political class here does not consults lesser mortals to choose a leader. But unlike God, they push down the throats of the people, who they anointed. They have the knife and the yam, and they give out at their whims not minding whose ox is gored.
When they are through crowning an acolyte, a plethora of demands is laid before them. Meeting those demands is sacrosanct not minding again whether the state is on fire or submerged in a deluge.
A prominent politician was overheard asking a former governor if construction of roads in the state would translate to food in his stomach. The political class holds tenacious what comes to them. If that does not happen in time, it is construed as an unforgivable sin against any sitting governor.
This group view Gov. Ortom as usurping their rights, refusing orders, taking over the state political platform and belittling them. They say the Governor, instead of industrializing the state, is industrializing himself and not passing the goodies (naira) to the right-hand side.
The political class in Benue speaks tongue in cheek not condemning the atrocities been visited on the rural poor by the Fulani Herdsmen and other issues of development. They play safe in the hopes of patronage at the federal level and, in the process, abandoning the rural poor to their fate in the hands of the killer Fulani militia.
In all, the majority of the Benue population who resides in the countryside thinks Gov. Samuel Ortom may have been guilty of other things, but he has been their Moses, standing up to the Pharaoh in Abuja to demands freedom for his Benue people.
They need freedom from the incessant attacks on their communities by the menacing Fulani herdsmen. They need to be assured of adequate security and peace that has eluded them for so long. They need someone to share in their pains, mourning, heartbreaks inflicted by the herders. Gov. Samuel Israel Ortom, the “Nyamkyume I Djorov” empathizes and pacifies them in their moments of woes.
