By John Ogunsemore
Professor of African History at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, United States, Prof. Moses Ochonu said the presidential statement on the recent Benue killings betrays a lack of understanding of the particularities of the attacks.
The socio-political commentator was reacting to a Sunday statement by Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.
Onanuga stated that President Bola Tinubu had directed security chiefs to implement his earlier directive to bring lasting peace and security to Benue State.
In the same vein, the presidential spokesman said the attacks that claimed many lives were “reprisal attacks”.
He added that the president had charged Governor Hyacinth Alia of Benue State to convene “reconciliation meetings and dialogue among the warring parties”.
Reacting, Benue-born Ochonu said the presidential statement “is a classic case of the statement being much worse than the silence”.
He said, “The presidential spokesperson simply lazily recycled the cliched, outdated, and, in the current circumstances, misleadingly insulting bromides of ‘reprisal killings,’ ‘farmer-herder’ conflict, ‘reconciliation,’ and ‘peace dialogue.’
“It seems they found an archived presidential statement on an early 2000s conflict in some random Northern state and simply changed the date and state.
“They won’t even be bothered to get up to speed on the particularities of these Benue killings, the agenda and identity of those behind them, and the methodical, systematic and relentless character of the massacres.
“In the Yelwata/Daudu massacre, the armed herdsmen even killed soldiers, police, and NCDC personnel, sacking an army checkpoint and a police post.
“Yet, the unimaginative and clueless Bayo Onanuga and his crew are talking about ‘farmer-herder’ and ‘reprisal.’”
Ochonu said the statement was an example of “classic denialism and deflection from the demonstrable incompetence of Tinubu”.
He added, “Would it kill them to actually study what’s going on across Benue state, the actual demographic dimensions of the conflict, the broader context of the decades-long killings in the Middle Belt, and the Benue iteration of the killings?”
