The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) of Nigeria said Tuesday that 6,527 people have been displaced by jihadi attacks on Christian villagers in the state of Benue, including the massacre in the town of Yelewata on Friday.
NEMA said more than 3,000 of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) urgently needed food, water, medicine, and other essentials, having been driven from their homes almost empty-handed.
Eighty-two of the IDPs were identified as pregnant women, 252 as lactating mothers, and 657 as children under the age of 18. Ninety-one of the refugees are elderly persons.
“Urgent humanitarian support is being mobilised and delivered to alleviate the hardship of the displaced persons,” NEMA said.
The semi-official death count from local officials in the Yelewata attack reached 150 on Monday. Rescuers are still searching the rubble of burned houses for slain victims. Eyewitnesses to the attack said the marauding gunmen trapped entire families in the homes and then set the buildings ablaze.
Yelewata resident Titus Tsegba told the Associated Press on Monday that his wife and children were “burned to ashes beyond recognition” in the attack. He said survived because he was in a different part of town on Friday night. The youngest of his slain children was eight years old.
“Everything is gone,” Tsegba said.
Another survivor named Jacob Psokaa said the attackers surrounded Yelewata, firing indiscriminately at civilians and making it difficult to flee.
In addition to burning homes, the attackers burned the town’s food stores, wiping out an entire year of farming and creating the hunger crisis described by NEMA.
The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) condemned the massacres in Yelewata and the nearby town of Daudu on Monday.
According to NEMA, the body count increased when two soldiers and an officer from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) were killed in an ambush while responding to the attack on Daudu.
One of the confirmed victims from the Yelewata massacre was a pharmacist named Matthew Lormba. The association said his killing was a “stark reminder that healthcare workers are now an endangered species of humans in the state, and across Nigeria.”
“This has further depleted access to primary health care with absenteeism of health workers due to security concerns,” the group said.
NARD called the massacre “alarming and condemnable,” and warned ongoing violence in Benue state would wreak havoc upon its “thinly stretched and fragile health system.”
“Unfortunately, it appears that the government does not have the wherewithal to protect life and property,” the medical association added, joining the chorus of local and international voices that have criticized the government of President Bola Tinubu for doing little to protect Christian villagers.
Chinedu Ikeagwuonwu Klinsmann, a state leader in Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress (APC) party, demanded a stronger response to the Yelewata massacre from the president on Tuesday. Tinubu is scheduled to visit Benue state on Wednesday for a meeting with Governor Hyacinth Alia.
“Tomorrow’s meeting between the President and Governor Alia is a defining moment in the history of Benue. The meeting must not end in photo ops and press soundbites — it must produce measurable outcomes,” Klinsmann said.
Klinsmann called for establishing a “vigilant, community-based force” that could “gather local intelligence and respond swiftly to threats,” similar to the militias Nigeria has established in some other states. He said the Nigerian military and federal police should supply drone and satellite surveillance to assist the community polling program.
“The President must fast-track the National Livestock Transformation Plan in Benue, while offering financial and technical support for ranch development,” he said.
The plan Klinsmann referred to is a ten-year initiative, launched in 2019, that is supposed to eliminate free-range grazing and move cattle herds to a structured ranching system. The marauding Islamist gunmen of the Fulani tribe claim Christian farmers are infringing upon land that is rightfully theirs.
While Christian leaders accuse the Fulani of plotting genocide, some Nigerian officials think strict enforcement of anti-grazing laws might persuade the Fulani to stop attacking farm communities.
Governor Alia said in a televised interview on Monday that the killers who rolled into Yelewata and Daudu had plenty of AK-47s and bullets, but were not actually herding any cattle.
“What are their aims? They don’t even come with cows. They attack and kill, and after one week, a number of people now come back to occupy,” Alia said.
“What we understand on the ground is a simple equation. A thief will not just come to a community unless there is someone within the community who leads the thief to your house or the community,” he said.
Alia suggested the ranks of the gunmen were swelled by “bandits and terrorists” from outside Nigeria, coming across the border with Cameroon.
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