By Rekpene Bassey
The Yelwata massacre of June 13 and 14, 2025, in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State stands out as a dark stain in the narrative of Nigeria’s security misadventures. It is as haunting in its brutality as in its preventability.
The killing of nearly 200 unarmed civilians by suspected Fulani militia was not only gruesome but tragically predictable.
Entire households were annihilated, open-air markets destroyed, and more than 3,000 residents, primarily women, children, and the elderly, were forced to flee into forests in a desperate bid for safety.
In the wake of this horror, retaliatory attacks subsequently erupted about a week later, according to reports, with local youths targeting Fulani herders and killing hundreds of cattle. Thus, the vicious cycle of violence continues unabated, feeding on itself and drawing fresh blood from ancient wounds.
Despite the national outrage that followed, there is a grim sense that such massacres have become a recurring decimal in Nigeria’s terrain of violence. News today, forgotten tomorrow.
Although he could not visit the scene of the carnage, the President’s visit to Benue State was an empathetic gesture, somewhat timely and commendable; yet, the optics did little to conceal the gaping failures beneath.
While he condemned the killings and appealed for peace and justice, one moment captured the nation’s anguish with painful clarity: his public question to the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, “How come there are no arrests?” That question, simple yet piercing, cut through the veneer of official platitudes to expose the raw truth of systemic inertia and impunity.
The initial lack of arrests until the President’s question, days after such a coordinated and devastating attack, is more than a law enforcement oversight; it is an indictment of the entire security architecture.
For a crime of this scale to go unanswered, despite advanced intelligence warning, suggests not just failure but betrayal.
Reports have emerged that the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigeria’s principal domestic intelligence agency, had obtained credible intelligence weeks prior about an impending attack and duly passed this on to Operation Whirl Stroke (OPWS), a joint military task force headquartered in Lafia.
Yet, no preventive deployment followed. The question must be asked: what happened to the chain of responsibility between intelligence and action?
This failure, so costly in human lives, cannot be dismissed as mere miscommunication. When actionable intelligence is ignored or lost in bureaucratic limbo, it signals a structural decay in national security coordination. It is in this context that the President’s call for justice rings hollow unless followed by real institutional accountability.
If one arm of government toils to gather intelligence while another slumbers at the gates, then the state’s foundational promise to protect the lives of its citizens becomes a mockery. What happened in Yelwata was not just a massacre; it was a failure of governance.
The magnitude of this failure necessitates more than official visits or televised condemnations. A high-level Presidential Commission of Inquiry should be immediately constituted, not just to investigate Yelwata but also to establish a framework for preventing future tragedies.
Such a commission must be independent, transparent, and empowered to summon individuals across agencies, uncover operational sabotage or negligence, and propose structural reforms. We cannot mourn in cycles and call it leadership. The republic must move from sympathy to strategy, from blame to action.
Furthermore, Nigeria must revisit the operational design of its intelligence agencies. The DSS must evolve beyond surveillance into a hybrid institution with tactical capabilities similar to those of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Intelligence without enforcement is impotence, a situation that leaves citizens at the mercy of both criminal networks and institutional lethargy. If the state cannot act on its warnings, it becomes complicit in the violence it fails to prevent.
Also essential is the creation of an interagency fusion centre, a galvanized joint command national security structure where military, police, intelligence, and civil agencies share real-time information and coordinate rapid responses.
The current system of siloed operations breeds fatal delays, duplications, and the perennial tragedy of missed opportunities. If Nigeria is to counter the escalating scale of violent attacks effectively, its security agencies must work as a unified entity, not as competing islands of protocol and ego.
Equally important is the urgent need to prosecute any act of dereliction, negligence, or complicity uncovered in the Yelwata episode. Where officers or commanders ignored credible warnings, failed to deploy troops, or withheld resources for primordial-ideological, personal or political reasons, justice must be swift and merciless.
The state must send an unequivocal message that the blood of innocent Nigerians is not the price of official incompetence. Let it be remembered that laws not enforced are but paper promises.
Data from the International Crisis Group and Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission reveal that over 6,000 people have died in Benue’s herder-farmer conflicts since 2016. More than 1.5 million citizens have been displaced in the state alone.
Nationwide, over 14,000 lives were lost to violent incidents in 2023, according to the Nigeria Security Tracker. Yet prosecutions for mass killings remain rare, and convictions rarer still. What, then, is the use of law without justice or government without accountability?
The unchecked impunity has emboldened armed groups, destroyed public confidence in state institutions, and set Nigeria on a dangerous trajectory toward lawlessness. As Cicero reminds us, salus populi suprema lex esto – “the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.” This principle must be revived at all levels of statecraft, or the country risks crumbling under the weight of its indifference.
The digital sphere, too, must not be ignored. Social media is increasingly weaponized to inflame ethnic tensions, spread disinformation, and incite retaliatory violence. Regulatory bodies, including the National Orientation Agency and the National Broadcasting Commission, must proactively monitor and sanction such behaviour. But such regulation must be balanced with civil liberties, lest the state itself becomes tyrannical in the name of order.
Yet security cannot be imposed solely through command structures or technology. It must be cultivated from the grassroots. Local peace architecture, comprising traditional leaders, community-based organizations, and religious institutions, must be re-integrated into the national security strategy.
These actors often possess cultural legitimacy and local intelligence that no central agency can replicate. They must be empowered, trained, and incorporated into broader early warning systems.
For too long, Nigeria has treated security as a fire brigade operation, responding to crises only after the embers of tragedy have grown into infernos. This reactive model is not only inefficient but morally bankrupt.
We need a paradigm shift from reaction to prevention, from denial to realism, from rhetoric to results. The lives of Nigerian citizens must no longer be expendable footnotes in the tragic ledger of national failure.
The Yelwata massacre, if left unaddressed, will not be the last. It is merely a symptom of a deeper malaise: a state that is too slow to act, too fragmented to coordinate, and too indifferent to care. This is not merely a security issue; it is an existential crisis. When a nation cannot defend its most vulnerable, it abdicates its moral claim to sovereignty.
Plato once warned that the penalty for refusing to engage in politics is to be ruled by men worse than oneself. The same can be said of leadership: when states fail to lead with justice, they invite chaos. If Nigeria does not act with urgency, it will be governed not by the constitution but by the gun.
Therefore, let justice be done though the heavens fall. And it may well fall upon those who ignored warnings, who slept through alarms, who allowed Yelwata to burn. Only then can the nation-state begin to reclaim its soul, and the people begin to hope again.
Rekpene Bassey is the President of the African Council on Narcotics (ACON) and a security and drug prevention expert.
