Benue Gov Rejects Emergency Rule, Blames Attacks On Foreign Herders
Following the recent killings in Benue and Plateau states that claimed numerous lives, Benue State Governor Hyacinth Alia on Wednesday accused foreign nationals of carrying out the attacks with the primary aim of displacing residents from the states.
Alia claimed that the attacks are coordinated and are being carried out by foreign herders who no longer move around with their cattle.
Speaking in an interview on Arise TV, Alia said there is a trend in the spoken language by the perpetrators, adding that some of the indigenes understand what they were saying.
According to him, the killers are “Malians and different from our people”, emphasising that “they are not Nigerians.”
He said, “The second phase of the armed herder attacks is that those who have combined with the armed herders do not even speak what we understand, and they don’t look like us Nigerians.
“So, they have combined forces with these people. Why are they coming? It’s just to kill, maim, drive people out of their land and then to occupy.
“The attacks we have experienced of late are very deliberate and so calculated with the aim to come, kill, maim and then land grab.”
He further noted that armed herders hide in the bush and, after wreaking havoc in communities, return to the areas to establish settlements.
Speaking further, Alia said the declaration of the state of emergency wasn’t the right approach to addressing the insurgency.
Alia said the number of local governments under attack has drastically dropped from 17 to six over the last two years.
“What we need is emergency help for now. We need absolute support. Calling for any emergency does not occur here.
“The federal government has supported us; they sent two armoured tanks that came in, and our situation had changed.
“We had a better narrative, but what we need to do is to get our people back home, to drive out the invaders, the armed invaders who have brought in people who do not even speak the Nigerian languages we speak.
“Let them move back to wherever they came from and allow us farmers to go back to our ancestral land.
“We couldn’t have trimmed it from 17 local governments in the front lines of the attacks to nine and then now to six, which means we can do this, but we need help. And that is a fact.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Alia disclosed that the killer’s language was different from the Fulani or Hausa spoken in the country.
By appearance, Alia said, contrary to the common movement of cows and sticks carrying, the attackers are fully armed with AK-47s.
“Let’s have the narrative very correct. We know Nigerians by their ethnicities; we can identify a Fulani man, a Yoruba man, or a Hausa man, and we know them. Even the regular traditional herders know them. They work with cows, herding with sticks.
“But these folks [the attackers] are coming in fully armed with AK-47s and 49s. They do not bear the Nigerian look. They don’t speak like we do. Even the Hausa they speak is one sort of Hausa.
“It’s not the normal Hausa we Nigerians speak. So it is with the Fulani; they speak. There is a trend in the language they speak, and some of our people who understand what they say give it names. They say they are Malians and different from our people. But they are not Nigerians, believe it.”
“This is the second phase we are seeing. The initial ones were with the traditional herders. With the traditional herders, we had fewer troubles. What we are experiencing now has a new, different, strange face, and it’s alarming.
“These terrorists are everywhere. We are under siege. These people just come, kill, and run back. Where are they running to? The way these killings are being planned and carried out is coordinated.
“Some local government areas in Benue share borders with Cameroon, and those borders are quite porous. The terrorists have their havens in Taraba, Nasarawa, and the border regions of Cameroon.”
During a meeting with the National Security Adviser, Nubu Ribadu, and selected stakeholders at the government house in Makurdi, on Monday, April 21, 2025, Alia had also noted that “These people (killers) do not have any reason to live with normal people.
According to him, the state is faced with losses of lives and destruction of farmlands and property, while noting that with 17 IDP camps in the state, it has become difficult to get IDPs back to their ancestral homes.
Subsequently, he said, “Sankara is our headquarters of food, and the attacks have been persistent and continuous.”
Benue Gov Rejects Emergency Rule, Blames Attacks On Foreign Herders is first published on The Whistler Newspaper