Farmers-herders conflict: Benue records 5,138 deaths in 87 months

A total of 5,138 people have been killed within 87 months due to armed invasions in different parts of Benue State.

Executive Secretary of Benue State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Dr Emmanuel Shior, stated this on Monday at a press conference in Makurdi, the Benue State capital, during which he gave an update on the humanitarian crisis in the state.

Shior noted that the death figures were recorded between 2015, when the present government of Samuel Ortom assumed power, and March 13, 2023.

He said within seven years and three months, 18 out of the 23 local government areas of the state were affected by the invasions/killings, adding that in 2015 alone, the state recorded 1,177 killings while 809 were killed in 2016.

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The breakdown indicated 43 persons were killed in 2017, while the state recorded 440 killings in 2018; a total of 174 in 2019 and 88 killed in 2020.

Shior added that the killings took on a colossal dimension in 2021 with a higher figure of 2,131 while in 2022, the state recorded 172 killings, and so far in the three months of 2023, it had recorded 104.

The SEMA boss said the figures were recorded from reported cases only as, there were many other unknown cases of killings on farms or bush paths in remote villages of the state.

Shior, therefore, reiterated his call on the federal government to boost security in the state while also attending to the infrastructural needs of the thousands of displaced people in camps so that they could return to their ancestral homes.