Who will save the Middle Belt?
By Emeka Alex Duru
Gradually, Nigeria is losing its Middle Belt Region to insecurity and outright leadership failure. Benue, Plateau and Kaduna, are the most vulnerable, in this case. Rural communities in the states are becoming centres of attacks by marauding herdsmen and rampaging bandits, these days. And while the killings and bloodletting go on, not much is heard from the relevant government agencies. The situation is becoming critical.
The Middle Belt is currently in a piteous state. Not that any part of the country is particularly safe but the rapidity of attacks on innocent Nigerians in the zone is assuming a bizarre dimension. In fact, any Nigerian that does not feel sufficiently appalled by the volume of human blood being regularly wasted on that axis, deserves pity. By stroke of fate, the region holds a lot for Nigerians and has mattered at strategic junctures in the country’s march to grace. Or grass! The entirety of its environment presents a paradox of sort.
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The region prides itself as the food basket of the nation and rightly so. With immense endowments on agricultural resources and arable land, Middle Belt feeds Nigeria in many ways. Indigenes of the region have also borne the brunt of keeping Nigeria as one. When force was adopted to needle the country together, sons and daughters of the area, had responded, with some, paying the supreme sacrifice. From constituting the foot soldiers of the Northern Constabulary Force that later metamorphosed to the Nigerian Army to the tasty moments of the 1967 – 1970 Civil War, Middle Belt indigenes have always stood up to be counted. But they are now, in a mess, sort of. From the status of an area metaphorically flowing with milk and honey, Middle Belt now floats on rivers of blood. Theirs, is a pathetic case and presents an analogy of a physician who had cured others but cannot cure himself.
Benue is bleeding profusely and in a shadow of itself. Plateau has lost its tranquil ambience. Kaduna is no more a melting point of Nigerians and centre of unity. In place of their traditional attributes of peace and accommodation, uncertainty has taken over. Since January, the three states and others in the region, have witnessed uprisings leading to loss of lives and destruction of properties.
A recap of some of the sordid developments in them, may tell the story. In Plateau, about 130 persons have so far been killed, 1,000 buildings burnt and 22 villages sacked in the disturbances in Mangu and Riyom Local Government Areas of the State. According to the State’s chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the killings, which started in Mangu villages on Monday, May 15, 2023, by so-called unknown gunmen, have claimed many lives and property with many persons still missing.
In Benue, the mayhem took a frightening dimension when suspected herdsmen killed about 18 persons during an attack on the Iye Community in Uvir Council Ward of Guma Local Government Area, of the State. Some of the victims, including women and children were said to have been beheaded and their remains burnt alongside their houses and food barns. Others sustained varying degrees of injuries during the attack. The assailants had stormed the community when the residents were transacting business on a market day. The victims had earlier been displaced from their village, Tse-Orvihi in Uvir Council Ward of the same Guma LGA.
Reports by the people of Southern Kaduna, under the aegis of Atyap Community Development Association (ACDA), claimed that 518 people have been killed, 20 villages ransacked, 18 burnt down, and thousands of victims rendered refugees across many communities from 2017 till date, over the persistent attacks and killings in Atyapland in the Zangon Kataff Local Government Area of Kaduna State. There are other instances.
These are conservative figures but are quite staggering. They show the extent sanctity of human life has been reduced in the country. Bad enough, while the mayhem lasted, neither the former President, Muhammadu Buhari, nor the erstwhile governors of the states – Samuel Ortom (Benue), Simon Lalong (Plateau) and Nasir el-Rufai (Kaduna), took any proactive measures to stem the tide. The four offered mere caricature of governance as far as the zone was concerned. For Buhari, nothing actually mattered as long as it did not have direct impacts on him. His, was an instance of President “See-nothing, Do-nothing”. He only enjoyed the glamour of the office but did not assume the responsibilities attached to it. When also his Fulani kinsmen were suspected to be brains behind the atrocities in the region, it seemed to him, in order.
The governors also did not help matters. Ortom was more in clownery than governance. He did not know the weight of the office he occupied, hence he trivialised it. Governorship, for him, ended with parceling out the monthly allocation from Abuja and hanging out with his fellow jesters in Rivers (Nyesom Wike), Abia (Okezie Ikpeazu), Enugu (Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi) and Oyo (Seyi Makinde). Apart from his occasional crocodile tears on the killing of his people in Benue, Ortom lacked any idea on how to tackle the situation. He was at best, a lame-duck chief executive.
In Plateau, Lalong saw himself more as a house boy to Buhari. He lived to please the former President, always groveling in servile manners. He lacked courage and sense of purpose. El-Rufai, was mischievous. The killings in Kaduna did not matter to him as long as the victims were not his fellow Muslim Fulani. In such atmosphere of abysmal leadership failure, the disorder in the Middle Belt was bound to prevail.
But the danger in allowing it to persist is that it poses serious threat to the security of the country and its corporate existence. Immediate result of the disturbances in the region is the disruption in food supply chain to the rest of the country and the consequent hunger in the land.
Something reasonable must be done to save the Middle Belt from its present drift. The occasional fire brigade military and police actions, appear to have failed in providing the needed solution to the crises in the region. The government in the area and the centre must devise a more pragmatic approach for peace to reign among the residents in the zone. Simply put, there is an urgent need to stop the killings in Benue, Plateau and Kaduna.