By Lemmy Ughegbe, PhD
When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu visited Benue State on June 18, 2025, following the horrific massacre of over 200 Nigerians in Yelewata, hopes were high that he would use the occasion to acknowledge the truth of what was happening in the Middle Belt and finally chart a path to justice.
But what transpired in Makurdi was anything but a national reckoning. Instead, it was a tightly choreographed event disguised as a “town hall meeting” — a gathering so exclusive that it had only three active participants: President Tinubu, Governor Hyacinth Alia, and the Tor Tiv, Prof James Ayatse, with the rest being an elite class of cheerleading spectators.
By any credible standard, this was not a town hall. Town halls are intended to be open forums where citizens, particularly victims and survivors, can engage directly with their leaders. They are structured as platforms for listening, accountability, and community-based dialogue. They are not closed-door monologues between the President and a royal chair.
The people of Benue- displaced families, survivors of repeated attacks, widows of slain farmers, and grassroots voices- were not invited. And so, it became a town hall in name only, bereft of the people and detached from their pain.
What made the occasion even more distressing was the fact that the government had choreographed the event to exclude critical voices, thereby shielding the President from confronting the raw and bitter reality. This was not just an absence of inclusiveness — it was a deliberate effort to maintain a comfortable illusion. A leadership moment was squandered in favour of political optics.
And yet, it was during this elite-only audience that the lone voice of truth rang out — from the Tor Tiv himself. With rare candour, Prof Ayatse said what needed to be said, “Mr President, it is not herders-farmers clashes, it is not communal clashes, it is not reprisal attack… What we are dealing with here in Benue State is a calculated, well-planned and full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits… The wrong diagnosis will lead to the wrong treatment.”
While not disputing the fact that there are occasional clashes between real herders and farmers, those words spoken by the Tor Tiv were the most important uttered in that entire visit.
For decades, the Federal Government and security architecture have mischaracterised Benue’s agony as communal misunderstandings or farmer-herder disputes and nothing more. But as the Tor Tiv laid bare, this is no ordinary clash — it is a war of extermination.
Genuine clashes between farmers and herders never lead to the massacre of hundreds of innocent persons in their sleep. Only terrorists disguised as herders or land grabbers can do such monumental damage as witnessed in Yelewata.
Tragically, President Tinubu’s response fell painfully short of the moment. Instead of engaging the gravity of Tor Tiv’s diagnosis, he chose to recast the issue, saying: “I heard from Prof Ayatse about land grabbing… However, if we learn how to share and accommodate, we have enough land to feed, raise our children, and cultivate happiness and prosperity. We must do it.”
This is not just a misinterpretation — it is a distortion. It is a failure to reckon with a clear and present danger. When a royal father says, “We are dealing with war,” the response cannot be “, Go and live peacefully with your neighbours.”
The President’s re-framing is not only tone-deaf; it is dangerous. It normalises mass murder, deodorises genocide, and preposterously suggests moral equivalence between victims and their killers.
The stakes could not be higher. According to the Tor Tiv, what the President came to condole is just “one of a series of several massacres in the state.” And he is right. From Guma to Agatu, Logo to Kwande, Benue has become a killing field. Entire communities have been wiped out, lands seized, and ancestral homes overrun. IDP camps are overflowing with the dispossessed. And yet, Abuja responds with euphemisms.
The President did call for the arrest of perpetrators, stating: “How come no arrest is… I expect there should be arrests of those criminals.”
This raises a disturbing question: was the President suggesting that, days after a massacre of this scale, he had not already communicated with his appointed police chief to demand immediate arrests? If that is the case, it is not just hypocritical — it is comical in its negligence.
A Commander-in-Chief who arrives after over 200 citizens are butchered and then asks his own Inspector General of Police in a public forum why no arrests have been made reveals either shocking unawareness or performative outrage. Either way, it reeks of unseriousness.
His follow-up action was to order the formation of “a committee of leaders” and suggest a new radio channel for promoting “tolerance.” Meanwhile, he asked for land to establish a ranch, saying: “Give me land, governor, me. Land here to establish a ranch, and we will share the profits after you retire.”
This tone was at best flippant and at worst insulting — coming in the wake of mass deaths and displacement. It reflected a leader more concerned with public relations and political posturing than a sincere reckoning with grief.
Peace cannot be negotiated in the absence of justice. It cannot be forged by equating aggressors with victims. And it certainly cannot emerge from a town hall that excludes the very people affected.
By refusing to name the perpetrators — “herder terrorists and bandits,” as the Tor Tiv correctly did — the President reinforced the culture of impunity. This failure to speak truth to the crisis risks making him complicit in a long history of official denialism that has enabled the butchery in Benue and other parts of the Middle Belt.
It is not the first time that a national tragedy has been diluted through elite-only ceremonies and cosmetic consultations. From Southern Kaduna to Plateau and Zamfara, the Nigerian state has repeatedly staged these pseudo-dialogues while real victims continue to bury their dead. The state’s response is often a mixture of denial, appeasement, and evasion.
What kind of leadership visits a land soaked in blood and sidesteps its people? What kind of presidency stages a town hall with no town — only power? The Makurdi encounter was a parody of democratic consultation. It was, in many ways, the embodiment of Tinubu’s infamous campaign phrase — “a town hall different from balablu”-except this time, it was not a gaffe but policy: disconnected, distorted, and deeply dismissive.
True leadership would have met the people where their wounds are deepest — in the displacement camps, among grieving families, and in destroyed communities. A real town hall would have opened the floor to survivors, to women whose husbands were killed, to orphans, to youth groups demanding protection, and to traditional rulers beyond the first-class elite.
The truth remains: Benue is under siege. Its people are being slaughtered, not by anonymous “hoodlums,” but by organised militias with ideological motives and territorial ambitions. Any attempt to downplay or misframe this amounts to a betrayal.
It is time for the Nigerian state to stop lying to itself. Time to stop gaslighting the victims. Time to call a spade what it is: a genocidal campaign, not a “clash”. Only then can we embark on the journey to true justice?
Until then, these elite “town halls” will remain what they are — balablu in fine agbada. Well-dressed denial. Democracy without the people. Empathy without engagement.
And history will not forget.
