It is no longer news that Professor Gabriel Nyityo recently met a cruel fate at the hands of suspected murderous herdsmen who butchered him and his brother in the deep of the night at Adaka, a settlemet along Naka Road on the outskirts of Makurdi. The incident came on the heels of the killing, in Ohimini, Otukpo local government, of State chairman of Miyetti Allah who was allegedly coming from a peace meeting. The Sultan of the Sokoto Caliphate immediately issued a strong condemnation of the killings and called for the immediate investigation of the crime as well as the arrest of the culprits. The Sultan's condemnation inspired militant herdsmen across the Middle Belt who vowed revenge. Since then, two prominent sons of Benue State have been assassinated, brutally cut down by suspected herdsmen. First to be eliminated was former Secretary to the Government of Benue State, Professor David Salifu of Idoma extraction who was cut down in an ambush in Wukari on Taraba's border with Benue State. Salifu's killing neither attracted the condemnation of the Government of Benue State nor that of the Sultan of Sokoto, except an obituary note that was issued from the office of the Secretary to the Government of Benue State, the office once occupied by the deceased. Just one week after, another Professor Gabriel Nyityo of Moses Orshio Adasu University Makurdi met his own cruel death at the hands of suspected herdsmen. So far, there is also no condemnation of this dastardly murder from Ayatutu Professors' Forum to which the slain Professor belonged, as the association is still compiling facts for a well-articulated press response. The murder of these two prominent Benue sons may be mere coincidence and a stroke of fate, but is it possible to construct parallels between the two killings given that they were both well coordinated and backed up by some distant potentate? Meanwhile, Benue State is embroiled in a critical interface between politics and the crisis of insecurity that has reduced the state into a killing field by militant herdsmen, its government sadly caught up in a web of politics and subterranean issues of insecurity even as the political leadership of the state appears complicit in some of the killing of innocent people of the state. The reason for this assumption is not far fetched. It is strongly evident in the refusal of the political leadership of Benue State to come to terms with the fact that the state is under siege by militant herdsmen masquerading as locals. Is it coincidence that the owl cried at night and the next day a child died? The Sultan is the supreme leader of the Islamic world in sub-Saharan Africa whose word of condemnation is tantamount to a declaration of war. Furthermore, the continuous silence of the ruling political class is enough conspiracy that appears to have sealed the fate of Benue State and handed it over for the reckless killing spree over helpless and law-abiding citizens. The systematic and gradual elimination of Benue's educated elite appears to be the beginning of another phase of genocide shifting from rural farming populations to urban intelligentsia who hold the key to the transformation and development of Benue State. It is wake up call for the intelligentsia to challenge the docility of the ruling political class of Benue State and Nigeria as to the decline of law and order that has devalued life in Nigeria in contemporary times. - Prof. Wilfred Uji contributed this piece from the diaspora

Posted: 1month ago

Author: Editor in Chief

Current date: 14 August 2026