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… Benue survivors give graphic details of attacks, miraculous escape
• 11-year-old victim with spinal cord bullet injury needs surgery to walk again
From Scholastica Onyeka, Makurdi
Eleven-year-old Doose Faga may not walk again except God intervenes in her situation. The bullet severed the spinal cord of Doose during an attack by herdsmen militia in Mgban village, Guma Local Government Area of Benue State on April 6, 2023.
Though her mother, Magdalene Faga and other family members who miraculously escaped are happy to be alive, their joy has been soured by the condition of Doose, who desperately needs specialised surgery.
Recall that gunmen suspected to be herdsmen militia carried out renewed attacks in Benue State as officials of the government revealed that over 15 local governments, namely, Guma, Agatu, Kwande, Logo, Apa, Obi, Otukpo, among others, were affected, resulting in the death of over 6000 persons killed so far since 2018.
The most recent, deadly attacks on the state took place on the 4th and 6th of April 2023, where over 130 persons were killed in one week.
While the armed herdsmen killed over 50 persons in Umogidi community in Otukpo LGA, 36 others were killed in Mgban, Nyiev Council Ward of Guma LGA. It is also worthy to mention that many other killings have also taken place after two soldiers and 15 others were killed in Opaha community, in Apa LGA, last Tuesday.
The 36 persons were killed at the internally displaced persons (IDPs) camp, LGEA primary school, located at Mgban community in Guma LGA along the Makurdi-Lafia road, in an attack that started at about 8pm and lasted till 10pm.
When the incident happened, Doose, her mother, Magdalene, and two other siblings, who were also injured, were among the few lucky ones who cheated death on that day. At the Benue State University Teaching Hospital, (BSUTH), Makurdi, Doose and many other victims were still on admission receiving treatment.
When this reporter visited, Magdalene was sitting by her daughter’s sick bed with one hand supporting her jaw, gazing into space. You could see helplessness and despair written all over her. In the attack, Magdalene’s three children were shot and she lost one. One has been discharged while one is still on admission in the hospital. She could not speak English but managed to narrate her miraculous escape through an interpreter.
“I was not around when it happened but when I returned, my mother told me Fulani men attacked them in the classroom at Mgban, in Guma LGA. She said in the night, they were preparing to sleep while some of the children were already asleep, when the killers came and started shooting at them. She said they were so afraid to even run because you didn’t know which direction to run.
“She told me that some of them were saved because the dead people fell and covered them,” the bereaved mother recalled.
Magdalene said she has been praying to God to heal her daughter so that her hopes and dream concerning Doose would be fulfilled.
“As I have these children and have been suffering in the village, I sent them to school so that one day she will become successful and lift me out of poverty. I feel so broken that she is lying on this bed and I don’t know what will happen if she doesn’t walk again, God forbid,” she muttered.
At the paediatric orthopaedic ward, a source that didn’t want to be named, described the situation as horrible as she said 36 patients were admitted from the camp including 12 children.
At the time of visit, nine of the children had already been discharged, leaving Doose and two others. The source said the children came in with gunshot injuries, fracture and various degrees of injuries on their bodies, shoulders, legs, heads and hands.
The source, who told our correspondent that they were doing their best for the patients, said: “Doose may not walk again but because she is a child she has a 50/50 chance if a neurosurgeon attends to her and quickly too. She has a gun shot injury to her spinal cord. At the moment she is on medications. She occasionally has pains and is being treated for that. She is also on antibiotics to prevent her from getting infection Another victim, Mrs Mercy Kaior, a widow with five children, was also at the hospital with her nine-year-old daughter, Hembafan Kaior. She also told a harrowing story of how she escaped death.
Her words: “We were at the LGEA Primary School, Mgban, where we are taking refuge because Fulani herdsmen destroyed our homes. On the 6th of this month, we heard gunshots in the neighbouring villages at about 8pm. After a little while, people ran away from the villages to meet us in the school.
“The attackers followed them to the school. We were all sleeping in the class; it was a large hall and they blocked the doors and started shooting sporadically. Another one came in with a cutlass and started cutting people. This made people to open the windows and started jumping out.
“When they saw that people were jumping through the windows, they left the door and surrounded the building by the windows. They kept shooting and all those who jumped out then were gunned down.
“So when I saw that their attention was now on the windows, I left the corner where I was hiding and quietly crawled to the door.
As I peeped through the door and didn’t see anybody, I ran out and headed straight to the bush near the school and climbed to the top of a tree.”
Speaking amid tears, Mrs Kaior said: “As I speak to you, the whole thing is coming back fresh, playing in my head like a movie. I ran and left my children. (Sobbing). While I was there in the bush, I felt like running back because of them because I don’t know what the killers have done with them.
“While on the tree there, I waited until the gunshots stopped and I came down, used all my strength and ran back to the hall looking for my children, when I saw them, among the five, three were harmed and two were okay. But I was happy to meet them alive.”
Asked if there were soldiers on ground before the incident, Kaior said everyone, including the soldiers, ran for their dear lives: “They only came back after the attackers left. The soldiers were the ones that brought us to the hospital.
“But when I came out, what I saw surprised me. The hall was filled with bloodstains and some were flowing on the floor. People were groaning in pain, some with big machete cuts, others with gunshot injuries, many with broken legs and arms and other bruises.
“Those who were killed were still within the hall and other dead bodies were outside.
The people who came back started separating the dead from the living. Everyone they turned, I prayed they were not my children but after sometime, I was shown where they were kept and I can’t explain how relieved I was when I saw them. Everyone thought the attackers had kidnapped me.”
Kaior said those who were alive were saved by the grace of God as most people could not even move their bodies to run out of fear.
Our correspondent also encountered another victim, Bier Sewuese from Mgban, married with two children. While she was in the female orthopaedic ward, her husband was in the male surgical ward, both with various degrees of injuries.
Narrating her story, Sewuese said she was in the hall with others when the herdsmen came: “As they were cutting people with cutlass, one came straight to me and as he was dragging me, I was shouting and after sometime, I stopped and laid still, pretending as if I was dead. It was then that he left me,” she said.
Mama Sase Akuma, an elderly woman in her 70s, was simply saved by the dead. Speaking through an interpreter, Mama Akuma said: “Where and how can an old woman like me run. I was still lying down trying to figure out the noise and what was happening when people started falling as they were shot.
“As we were still on the floor, people that were shot fell on me and the children around me. So I just lay down and closed my eyes.
When the attackers came closer, there was blood everywhere and they thought we were all dead. So they went away. That was how I and the children survived the attack.”
A nurse at the hospital, Dorcas Adule, could not hold her emotions when she conducted our correspondent round some of the patients. She stated that they lost a certain woman who was admitted at the hospital, adding, “Her husband was killed in the attack, her son admitted in the paediatric ward, she died also leaving her son who has been discharged.”
She said out of 36 patients admitted, two females died in the hospital, some had been discharged while others were still receiving treatment.
On his part, Tyoor u Nyiev, Chief Bernard Shawa, who narrated his experience said he was at home and outside at about 10 pm when we heard gunshots.
He explained that at first he was not sure if it was an attack until the gunshots grew louder and eventually he saw billows of smoke arising from houses that were set ablaze by the herders.
Chief Shawa further narrated that the assailants entered the classrooms, housing the IDPs one after the other and shot their victims at close range. He said 36 of them died instantly while 39 were moved to the hospital for treatment.
Earlier, Chairman of Guma LGA, Mr Mike Ubah, who is also the Chairman of Association of Local Government Chairmen (ALGON), in the state lamented that many of the deaths recorded indicated that two or more members of particular families were killed by the herders, the sons of the Tyoor inclusive.
Another example was Nyi Isherev, a 75-year-old man who was shot in the buttocks while attempting to flee from the attackers. He described the moment as horrific. His 30-year-old son who was in the same ward with him at the Benue State University Teaching Hospital (BSUTH) was shot in the thigh.
Lamenting the increase in herdsmen attack on Benue communities, Governor Samuel Ortom, urged the federal government to end the killings in the state adding that the perpetrators must be fished out and punished.
He noted that in the attack, Tyoor u Nyiev, Chief Bernard Shawa lost two of his children saying if the bloodletting is allowed to continue, the Benue people may be annihilated in a short time.
Governor Ortom explained that it was for one of those reasons that the State Government enacted the Anti-Open Grazing Law to create a win-win for all.
He stated that the perpetrators are well known and should be fished out and punished for their acts.
Ortom who stated that the Benue people are law abiding and would not be provoked to take up arms against anyone, said if whoever assumes the mantle of leadership after him decides to repeal the Anti-Open grazing law, the person is welcome to do so, but that it would not happen under his watch.
On their part, the executives of ALGON in Benue State led by Mike Uba, have also called on the President to do everything humanly possible to halt attacks by his kinsmen in the state. The group noted that Fulani intentions in Benue and Nigeria have nothing to do with livestock development.
In a press statement earlier this year, ALGON Benue said: “First, it must be clear to all that the Fulani don’t even produce livestock. They largely import livestock into Nigeria, mostly from Yobe State, via Potiskum where most of the nation’s livestock is imported.
“What the Fulani are doing is land grabbing for the Fulani of the whole world. They are especially targeting Benue state and the Benue Valley for religious, political and solid mineral purposes. There is no livestock transformation plan in their agenda.
“As the nation continues to reject attempts from the Fulani lobby at the national level via the National Assembly to pass the National Water Bill with its vision to seize inland national water ways in furtherance of Fulani control and expansion therefrom, within Benue State, this agenda is being implemented vigorously via forceful take over and occupation of indigenous lands on River banks in over 13 local governments in the state including Kwande, Logo, Katsina Ala, Buruku, Tarka, Makurdi, Agatu, Apa, Gwer-West (Naka).
“Thus, what the Fulani are unable to get via National Water Bill, they are getting via forceful invasion and occupation of Benue River banks. What the nation (Tiv, Idoma. Southern Kaduna, etc) has rejected in RUGA or cattle colonies or grazing reserves, they are getting via occupation of these river banks.”
