Human rights activist and lawyer Dele Farotimi has stated that it would have been better if President Bola Tinubu had not visited Benue State than to visit the state and remain unfeeling towards the plight of its people.
Farotimi said the only person who said anything of note during the president’s visit to Makurdi, the Benue State capital on Wednesday, was the Tor Tiv V, James Ayatse, who described the attacks as a “calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits”.
“I must say very quickly that it would have been better if the president didn’t go,” the lawyer said on Channels Television’s ‘The Morning Brief’ on Thursday.
“The only thing worthy of anybody’s time was the words of the Tor Tiv, who spoke extensively to the reality of the situation in the Benue trough and spoke eloquently to the pains of the victims.
“Other than that, all the president had to offer were mere windows into his preoccupation and what truly concerns his aides and assistants.
Benue, a food-producing state in Nigeria’s North-Central zone, has been under heavy attacks by suspected herdsmen for some time. The killings have lingered for years, with some linking them to the quest for land dominance between the original agrarian dwellers and nomadic cattle rearers.
However, the killings in the last few weeks have been without a break. At least over 160 residents were confirmed killed in a series of attacks by suspected herdsmen who wreaked havoc in different communities in the state within two months.
Last Friday, scores of residents in the Yelewata area in the state were killed and over 3000 persons displaced during an overnight attack by suspected herdsmen. Though the government put the number of slain persons at 59, civil rights groups claimed that about 200 deaths were recorded.
The killings in Benue have attracted national outrage and global attention from Pope Leo XIV, who condemned the “terrible massacre” and called for an end to it.
After a barrage of criticisms from opposition arrowheads, President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday visited Benue and charged the service chiefs to end the bloodletting in the state and arrest the perpetrators.
Farotimi criticised the red-carpet reception the President got in Benue, a state that should be mourning the killing of scores of persons.
He said, “In Benue, they knew exactly what was of importance to the president, so they ensured that they put up the necessary theatre for 2027.
“The death of over 200 people did not count much; they were mentioned only in passing, and you would have been excused that it was a political event.
“The primary reason the state exists is to protect the lives and property of the citizens. We’ve almost lost our capacity to be shocked. 200 human beings were murdered, and the President went to Benue and was talking as if he were preparing for a campaign rally.
“It was more or less that they went to dance on the graves of some of whom may not even be identified. Let the state begin to protect the lives and property of the citizens.”
