Time for FG to End Killings in Benue and Taraba

Notes for File

Though terrorism has spread across many states in Nigeria, the cases in Taraba and Benue states are becoming increasingly worrisome to the extent that terrorists from Cameroon enter Nigeria and kill in the two states unchallenged.

What happens in most cases, is that these terrorists cross the borders, enter Nigeria’s territory, kill locals, destroy their homes, rape their women and cart away their foodstuffs and cattle almost on a weekly basis.

Residents of the affected areas have become so helpless that one wonders if they are still part of the country, especially with the federal government’s silence over their plights.

When President Bola Tinubu promised during his campaign that he would continue from where President Muhammadu Buhari would stop, many Nigerians had expressed shock in view of the poor handling of insecurity.  

Buhari administration failed in the area of security. He had helplessly watched killings in the two states, and even in Plateau to a point that fingers were pointed at him as being complicit.

For instance, the then governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, had strongly believed that the killers had a big brother in Aso Rock. He was furious about the federal government’s lackadaisical attitude to the carnage in Benue that he employed harsh words against Abuja. He was consequently declared a person-non-grata at the Presidential Villa. 

Since Buhari left office, the killers have continued in their bloody campaign.

Since President Tinubu reconstituted and reconfigured the nation’s military architecture which many see as a sign of seriousness to put the people’s enemies to rout, not much has been achieved in the two states. What is difficult to determine at this point is whether or not he would allow the non-challant attitude of his predecessor to the killings to subsist in the two states.

This is why many are calling on President Tinubu to confront the hoodlums head-on.

The federal government also need to employ diplomacy with the Cameroonian government to stop them from using that country as a base to launch deadly attacks on Nigerians.