Governor Hyacinth Alia has pushed back against claims that the Federal Government has not supported Benue State in tackling the violent attacks by armed groups.
“If he (President Bola Tinubu) didn’t have an understanding of what is going on, he won’t be giving us full support,” Alia said during The Morning Brief programme on Channels Television on Monday.
According to him, “Seventeen local governments out of 23 were under siege and then we fought it down to nine local governments. We fought it down to six and now to three. It came down because of the full support we got from the Federal Government.”
“The last time we had some severe attacks, three security units were assigned to us from the Federal Government. They came in and there was a huge shift. Those who had occupied the spaces in the local governments had to leave,” he added.
Despite this, fresh violence continues to plague the state.
On Friday, June 15, 2025, at least 59 people were killed in a night attack in Yelewata, Guma LGA, among them military and civil defense personnel.
This incident followed deadly assaults in April, where about 60 people were killed in Ukum and Logo LGAs, and another 42 in May in Gwer West LGA.
Pope Leo XIV condemned the “terrible massacre” as “extreme cruelty,” and public frustration has triggered protests and outrage nationwide.
Opposition leaders, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi have also criticized the government’s security response, calling for it to fulfill its constitutional role.
Alia expressed condolences to the families of those affected and said the support from the Federal Government was evident in the recent visit by Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Olufemi Oluyede.
On the root of the violence, Alia explained: “Before now, we are talking about the farmer-herder crisis. And now, it graduates from there and became the case where the herders came in but the armed men were amongst them and we tagged them: ‘the armed herders.’
“Now, what we experience generally is that the herds are not being brought but those who are in the frontline carry AK-47 and AK-49. What are their aims? They don’t even come with cows. They attack, they kill and after one or two weeks, and a number of people now come back to occupy.”
He also raised concerns about insider involvement: “It is very possible that members of the state may have been recruited into the external militia. We can’t deny that because one or two names have been mentioned but traditionally, there are some bandits within the territories.
“A thief will not just come into a community unless there is someone within the community who lives nearby,” he noted.
The governor blamed the ongoing threat in part on the state’s porous borders: “We share borders with Cameroon, with Taraba and with Nasarawa,” he said.
“They were not necessarily Nigerians speaking the Hausa we know or the Fulanis. When you come to the axis of Nasarawa.”
“This is where we have a lot of challenges. There are a number of happenings within Nasarawa State and there were routes where these people come in through any time they are shifted out of Benue. What we see now if anyone describes it as a reprisal, we wouldn’t say no to that.”
Alia added that his Nasarawa counterpart, Governor Abdullahi Sule, had shared intelligence about the attackers’ movement.
“The terrorists were coming into his state through Benue. When I told him that the havoc had already been caused at Yelewata in Benue, then he said probably, they came and made a touchdown in Yelewata in Benue and were going back because he said one person was macheted in Nasarawa State.”
