Armed men who have been attacking Benue communities in the last two months are foreigners, Governor Hyacinth Alia said last night.
According to him, 73 bodies were recovered in the latest round of attacks by the insurgents who swarmed Ukum, Logo and Katsina-Ala local government areas.
He explained that the attackers find their way into the communities in their hundreds on motorbikes, armed with \u201cAK-47, AK-49 and machetes\u201d.
The governor revealed that apart from Ukum, Logo and Katsina-Ala LGAs where 72 persons were killed by the invaders, three other councils \u2013 Kwande, Guma, and Gwer West \u2013 are now under a deadly siege.
Speaking on a television programme, Alia said: \u201cThese folks come in, fully armed with AK-47, AK-49. They don\u2019t bear the Nigerian look, and they don\u2019t speak what we speak.
\u201cTheir Hausa is one sort of Hausa, not the normal Hausa we Nigerians speak.
\u201cOur people who have witnessed the attacks say they are Malians and different forms of people, but they are not Nigerians.\u201d
He said the \u201cterrorists\u201d operated from cells in Nasarawa and the Nigeria-Cameroon border near Kwande LGA, exploiting porous borders.
\u201cThey come in as they kill, as they maim, as they push people away. They just keep killing, and then they run back,\u201d Alia said, emphasising their coordinated strategy.
The governor said the latest attacks, which turned Good Friday into a \u201cBlack Friday,\u201d saw villages in the Sankera axis surrounded at night.
\u201cThey surrounded a number of villages. They were ready, just willing to take anything walking or breathing out. Anything on their way is cleared.
\u201cBy morning, 72 deaths were confirmed\u201429 in Ukum, 27 in Logo, three in Katsina-Ala, and others in hospitals\u2014along with countless injuries and displaced residents,\u201d Alia recounted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alia highlighted that Ukum, Logo, Katsina-Ala, Kwande, Guma, and Gwer-West of the state\u2019s 23 LGAs are also now on the red line.
\u201cThey grab the land, they chase the people out, and they stay in the land. That\u2019s what\u2019s going on because there are some local governments here, and these people have occupied in the last 15 years.
\u201cThese occupied areas serve as bases for repeated attacks. Those are the areas you hear of, constant attacks, because they hit and then they go back into the local government hinterlands.
\u201cThe attackers also target food security, with herders in their group destroying stored crops. They would now open the barns, destroy the food, cut the yams and whatever. They cut the guinea corn and maize and throw them to the cows to eat,\u201d Alia explained.
Governor backs community policing
Alia said the attackers swarm the communities on bikes, stressing the need to empower the people to defend themselves.
\u201cThe terrorists come not just in their 50s but in hundreds, one, two and three hundred, on motorbikes, one motorbike carrying three or four people.
\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of terrorists just cruising in. Armed with sophisticated weapons, they outmatch local defences, including the Benue State Civil Protection Guards, who lack heavy weaponry.
\u201cThe civil protection guards are also around, but they don\u2019t carry heavy gadgets. The law does not permit them to do this.\u201d
Alia advocated community policing to counter the threat, citing the overstretched state of security agencies.
\u201cThe uniform people alone are overstretched. The locals are telling us, we want to go and protect our turf,\u201d he said, supporting calls for self-defence but cautioning against vigilantism.
The governor urged the Federal Government to establish special security operational bases at the borders and equip the locals.
He said that the state has, on its part, provided 100 vehicles and 600 motorbikes for security agencies, but stressed the need for more federal support, including collaboration with the NSA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Armed men who have been attacking Benue communities in the last two months are foreigners, Governor Hyacinth Alia said last night. According to him, 73 bodies were recovered in the latest round of attacks by the insurgents who swarmed Ukum, Logo and Katsina-Ala local government areas. He explained that the attackers find their way into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-naija-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/250px-Cattle_file_through_still_green_savanna_on_way_to_Lagos_Bosso.jpg?fit=250%2C162&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13535,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534\/revisions\/13535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}