The aggrieved people of Agatu, Benue State are currently arming themselves against the marauding Fulani herdsmen in the state after all efforts by the government to secure the people have proved abortive.
The people of Agatu seem to have resorted to self-help in their crises with blood-thirsty Fulani herdsmen who killed over 300 villagers in a reprisal attack.
Minors and adults now walk around the war-torn area with weapons to secure themselves in the advent of an attack by remnants of Fulani herdsmen over unsettled scores.
Blessing Joseph lies on a sofa, her eyes fixed on the butt of a rifle that she says she won’t hesitate to use if Fulani herdsmen come back to her remote village in central Nigeria.
The 19-year-old student isn’t the only one. Teenagers and even young boys carry machetes and daggers in villages in the Agatu area of Benue state.
“My father told me not to go out without holding a cutlass with which I can defend myself if attacked,” David Inalegwu, a nine-year-old primary school pupil, told AFP.
As Blessing watches, youths pass around a jerrycan of local gin, discussing a spate of attacks in February blamed on heavily armed Fulani herdsmen from neighbouring Nasarawa state.
Community leader James Ochoche Edoh said more than 20 Agatu villages were affected near the river Benue that forms the border with Nasarawa.
“Approximately 500 people or more could have been killed,” he claimed, in an unverified figure repeated by the former leader of Nigeria’s Senate, David Mark, who represents the district.
“The recent attacks took us by surprise,” said Edoh in the main Agatu town of Obagaji. “Families have been separated or killed.”
Violence blamed on Fulani herdsmen has given Nigeria’s government another security headache in addition to Boko Haram Islamists in the northeast and militants in the oil-producing south popularly referred to as the Niger Delta Avengers who have confronted the government with obnoxious and inconsiderable demands.
President Muhammadu Buhari has been attacked in the media by political analyst for his inactions concerning the nefarious activities of the Fulani herdsmen due to suspected tribal inclinations as well as his official roles as the patron of the herdsmen.
Their activities have further threatned the national unity of Nigeria which has remained delicate over years waiting for flimsy issues to provide a call for secession like the Biafra crisis.