By Suyi Ayodele
I am naturally hemophobic; I run from blood. But I had to encourage myself to watch the videos of the killings in Yelwata town in Benue State on Friday night. The killings, which the locals said started around 10.45 pm on Friday, lasted till 2.00 am on Saturday without any help coming the way of the helpless dwellers who were killed in their hundreds!
Benue is on the path to ‘genocidal annihilation’. You may have to pardon the specious tautology in this sentence. It is deliberate, and at the same time, the best way to convey the issues in today’s piece. This is necessary so that no one will be left in doubt about what we are talking about.
When a man feels the full impact of the percussion at the dance arena, he shows it by the folding of the two fists. My fists are folded today because in our very eyes, an ethnic group is on its way to extinction! Sadly enough, we appear helpless, or, to put it in its proper perspective: we are deliberately helpless to help the situation.
At the rate we are going, unless by deus ex machina, or the government wakes up from its deliberate slumber and acts, the entire Benue may go into extinction. Yet the people of Benue committed no crime. Sorry, I just remember, they are simply guilty of being Nigerians; minority Nigerians who are treated by those in power as expendable and dispensable entities! What is happening in Benue State is pure genocide, an annihilation in its raw form! This is completely sad!
The “Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Sixth Edition)”, defines the verb, ‘annihilate’ to mean: “Destroy largely or completely; blot out of existence.” When used figuratively, the same dictionary says the word means “Reduce to insignificance or powerlessness; silence or humiliate completely” (Pg 85).
The American historian and Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford University, California, USA, Norman Naimark, in a November 15, 2011, interview conducted by the British writer and editor, Alec Ash, spoke extensively about genocide. The dictionary under reference here defines ‘genocide as “The (attempted) deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group” (Pg1092).
In the interview, Naimark posits that “Genocide isn’t the preserve of fanatics and racist thugs- it’s part of human nature.” And when asked to define genocide, he responds by saying: “I don’t think there is a “correct” definition of genocide. At the same time, the most useful way to think about it is to start with the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
Then he goes ahead to state the provisions of Article Two of the 1948 UN Convention in relation to the definition of genocide to mean “acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnical, national, or religious group, as such”. Citing his 2010 book, “Stalin’s Genocide”, Naimark says that “social and political groups should be included in the definition” of genocide.
Naimark elaborates on how genocide happens and how it is often denied. He says the scourge could return anytime since “it’s part of human nature” and then recommends “the best books to read about it”. The books include: “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” by Christopher Browing” (February 28, 2017), “The Years of Extermination” by Saul Friedlander (April 1, 2008); “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder (October 12, 2010); “Blood and Soil” by Ben Kerman (September 25, 2007) and “A Problem from Hell” by Samantha Power (May 6, 2003).
One of the books, which Naimark did not recommend in his seminal interview is the one written by the anthropologist, Alexander Laban Hinton with the title: “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the U.S.” (June 8, 2021). The book, according to its synopsis, captures the demonstration by the white supremacists shortly after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.
In It Can Happen Here…., Hinton argued that “there is a real risk of violent atrocities happening in the United States.” Here is the synopsis of the book: “A renowned expert on genocide argues that there is a real risk of violent atrocities happening in the United States. If many people were shocked by Donald Trump’s 2016 election, many more were stunned when, months later, white supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us!”
“Like Trump, the Charlottesville marchers were dismissed as aberrations—crazed extremists who did not represent the real US. It Can Happen Here demonstrates that, rather than being exceptional, such white power extremism and the violent atrocities linked to it are a part of American history. And, alarmingly, they remain a very real threat to the US today. Alexander Hinton explains how murky politics, structural racism, the promotion of American exceptionalism, and a belief that the US has, have achieved a color-blind society; have diverted attention from the deep roots of white supremacist violence in the US’s brutal past.”
The social media influencer, Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), who visited the town hours after the killings, posted some videos that would touch the devil itself if he were to watch them! How in 2025 such horror could be visited on a people without a corresponding response from the State beats one’s imagination. How the perpetrators of such genocide could escape without any causality is a deeper low in the history of our security alertness!
For goodness’ sake, those who carried out the acts were no spirits. They did not appear suddenly in Yelwata and disappeared just like that! No. They travelled from somewhere to Yelwata. They used a means of transportation. Someone coordinated the attacks using a telecommunication device. Where were the security agencies in all this? Where were the top Army brass who said that they had relocated to Benue? Where is the efficiency of our intelligence agencies? How come nobody spotted the assailants; how come nobody had an idea of the attack before it happened?
And when the terrorists first attacked the police post in Yelwata, who got the signal at the Benue State Police Command Headquarters? Or are we to believe that when the killer squad showed up at the Yelwata Police Station, the men on duty simply disappeared and reported the incident to no one? Granted, the locals praised the efforts of the police during the attack, what happened to reinforcement? Why did help not come?
Watching the videos posted by VDM, my mind went back to Alexander Hinton again and his postulation on “how murky politics, structural racism…have diverted attention from the deep roots of white supremacist violence in the US’s brutal past.” Why is the Nigerian State playing the ostrich at the expense of the lives of the people? Why is the State deliberately impotent?
The more I consider the Benue killings and other killings of the minority tribes in the Middle-Belt zone of Nigeria, the more I am tempted to believe that there is a deliberate effort at exterminating some tribes so that the bigger ones can live! It is no news that Benue State has been under the siege of the Fulani herdsmen for a long time. It did not start today. But it is more prominent today, or rather, it became more pronounced during the eight years of the locusts that the lethargic General Muhammadu Buhari spent in Aso Rock.
Under the reign of the stark retired General, Benue buried their people in their hundreds. All the President-do-nothing did then was to laugh off the fact that his Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, refused to relocate to Benue as he ordered. Buhari departed Makurdi to Abuja and he did nothing to the IGP.
Then President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came with his Renewed Hope mantra. But the present situations in Benue, and most states of the North-Central, North-East and North-West, are nothing but hopelessness! States in the other southern states are just a bit better as the killings are not as pronounced as what we have up North.
In that single attack on Yelwata, over 200 people were killed. The videos show the charred bodies of people killed in their sleep. Children were burnt to ashes. And to underscore that what the attackers intended was annihilation, the store houses where grains and other food items were kept were completely razed! You may therefore want to ask what is the mission of the attackers if not to ensure that the people of Yelwata go into extinction?
How do we explain that after killing the people; after sending their children to their early graves, the attackers went for the food storage of the people? What is that if it is not to ensure that the survivors are starved to death afterwards?
And the best response from the government is the same colourless press statement reiterating the President’s directive to security chiefs to implement his earlier directive to bring lasting peace and security to Benue State, and a call on the governor of the state to convene “reconciliation meetings and dialogue among the warring parties to end the incessant bloodshed and bring lasting peace and harmonious coexistence between farmers, herders, and communities.”
President Tinubu and those in charge of our security architecture must stop the pretence game. And they must stop now! The Nigerian State must wake up from its deliberate impotency on this Benue matter! What is happening in Benue is not about “Political and community leaders in Benue State”, who act ‘irresponsibly’ and make “inflammatory utterances”. It is about the deliberate intention of the killers to completely erase their victims from the surface of the earth! It is only in a war situation that people are killed, and their means of livelihood burnt. Benue is not at war, at least the conventional way.
What happened in Yelwata on Friday night to Saturday morning was and is beyond mere communal clash. It was a calculated and well-coordinated action. That is how genocide happens; that is how annihilation takes place. It must be deliberate, it must be systematic, and it must be total, with the State playing the ostrich! Yelwata lost over 200 souls in less than five hours. Many have not been accounted for. That is pure genocide; complete annihilation to achieve an end! Those who doubt these assertions should read “The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (April 13, 2021) by Umit Kurt.”
Someone should tell Mr. President that the Yelwata attack is not just “the latest news of wanton killings in Benue State: that “is very depressing”, as penned by Bayo Onanuga in his ‘State House Press Statement.’ It is a deliberate attempt to wipe out a whole ethnic nationality. Yes, like the president said, “Enough is now enough”, but it must go beyond the rhetoric. The people of Benue need reassurance of the sanctity of their lives in the nation called Nigeria. They need hope that being in the minority is not a ticket to early graves.
They need someone to ignite in them a new sense of belonging; more so, they need solid protection from the State. The attacks on them are too graphic, they are too systematic for the agencies that call themselves intelligence agencies not to know about them and arrest the situations. The government has buried its head in the sound for too long. The echoing of the bazookas used in killing the people should be loud enough for the ostrich to know that the danger it is pretending not to recognise is real!
This is the time to stop “murky politics.” The people must not be sacrificed on the altar of politics and power games. Rivers State did not witness any killing, but President Tinubu declared a state of emergency there. What happened in Rivers State governed by an opposition party governor is nothing compared to the killings in Benue where the ruling President’s party has its governor.
Not a single soul was killed in Rivers State before President Tinubu sent all the democratic structures there packing! But in Benue, Plateau, Borno, Zamfara and other troubled States of the North, Nigerians are killed in their thousands, and the president is reducing the entire genocide to a mere ‘State House Press Statement’. The President should listen to himself talk occasionally. He should know that both the slave and the freeborn passed through the same process!
I close here with the timeless advice by Alexander Laban Hinton in that 2011 interview to wit: “… If societies stayed out of wars, protected the rights of groups of “others” through the rule of law, refused to tolerate racism and extreme nationalism and maintained democratic checks and balances on their political elites, one could imagine a world without genocide.” Only leaders with the right attitudes to governance can achieve this!
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
