“We Are Victims of Both Terror and State Marginalisation”
The Ochetoha K’Idoma, the apex socio-cultural organisation of Benue South Senatorial District (Zone C), has formally protested the exclusion of Idoma and Igede communities from the itinerary of the visiting United States Fact-Finding Mission led by Congressman Riley Moore.
In a petition submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, the group described the omission as a deliberate act that reinforces what it called a “dangerous and misleading narrative” portraying Benue State’s security crisis as affecting only Tiv-speaking areas.
“This exclusion is not an oversight; it is a systemic erasure of the suffering of our people,” the organisation stated.
The Invisible War
According to the petition, Benue South has endured sustained violent attacks for more than a decade. A 12-year timeline (2013–2024) attached to the letter documents repeated massacres across Agatu, Apa, Otukpo, and Obi Local Government Areas.
The group cited the 2016 Agatu Massacre, where more than 500 people were reportedly killed, and the April 2023 Umogidi attack in Otukpo LGA, during which 52 victims were buried in mass graves.
“Our land flows with blood,” the statement said. “Yet because our people absorb displaced families into private homes rather than formal IDP camps, the world assumes we are safe. We are not.”
Demands to the U.S. Delegation
The Ochetoha K’Idoma called on the U.S. Fact-Finding Mission to:
- Grant an immediate audience to leaders of Benue South
- Correct the distorted narrative that confines insecurity in Benue to a single ethnic group
- Channel humanitarian relief and reconstruction assistance to the Apa–Agatu corridor
In a statement signed by Dr. Echeofu Agada, Public Relations Officer of the organisation, the group warned that excluding Benue South undermines the credibility of any investigative mission.
“You cannot claim to establish facts while ignoring half the victims,” the statement read.
“The silence of Benue South is not peace; it is the silence of the graveyard.”
