16/06/2025
In the heart of Nigeria, where the people of Yelewata in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State, mighty and ancient, carves its path through fertile lands, there lived a people whose laughter was as rich as their harvests. They were the children of the soil, their lives intertwined with the rhythm of the seasons, their history etched into the very landscape.
Then, a shadow fell. Not a storm cloud, but a darkness that came cloaked in silence, leaving behind a trail of crimson. It happened. Their fields, once green with promise, became stained with the innocent. Their homes, once filled with warmth, became cold echoes of terror. The cries of their children, the desperate pleas of their mothers, the valiant last breaths of their fathers – and yet nothing was done. As the elders say, "When a tree falls on a tree, the top one is removed first." But here, the forest burned while the axes lay idle.
Our people, seemed to swell with unshed tears, carrying whispers of loss that drifted far beyond its banks. The people, bewildered and heartbroken, rose up. Their voices, usually lifted in song and celebration, now roared with anguish and a desperate plea for justice. They marched, a river of humanity flowing through the streets, demanding accountability, crying out for the bleeding to stop. We protested. Their signs were their pleas, their footsteps a rhythm of resilience against the encroaching despair.
But the powers that be, those who sat in distant, air-conditioned halls, saw not the suffering, heard not the cries. They saw only disruption, a nuisance to be quelled. They sent their forces, not to protect the grieving, but to silence their lament. The government stopped us. Truly, "The fly that has no one to advise it follows the co**se into the grave." The very hands meant to shield them, instead pushed them back, their pleas unheard, their righteous anger dismissed.
And as the cries for their own bleeding land faded, stifled by indifference and force, the government's gaze, like a restless spirit, drifted. Their attention, their resources, their purported "interest," was found not in the fields where the blood of their own citizens mingled with the earth, but in another land. Distant shores, foreign conflicts, a narrative far removed from the silent screams beneath the Benue sun. Indeed, "A man who is looking for a black goat should do so in the daytime." But their search for glory led them far from home, in the shadows.
The people of Benue watched, their hearts heavy as the rice mounds they once harvested. They saw how easily their pain was dismissed, how swiftly their pleas were swept aside for ventures abroad. The blood continued to stain their land, a constant, unspoken testament to a tragedy ignored, a protest suppressed, and a leadership whose focus lay beyond the cries of its own.
Yet, even in the deepest shadows, light can emerge. For those who lent their voice when many were silenced, who dared to speak the truth when "nothing was done," their courage was a balm. And to VeryDarkMan, a whispered thank you for standing as many government hands were either tied, unwilling, or actively silencing the cries of a bleeding land. Your voice, in that stark absence, became a torch.
And so, the warriors that stand firm, its strenght reflecting not just the sky, but the memory of those who fell, and the unanswered question that hangs heavy in the air: When will the blood of our own land matter as much as the soil of another? The silence of the Benue, once a testament to peace, now whispers of a justice yet to come, and a people who, though silenced, will never forget the land that bleeds, and the government that looked away.
written by MEE MEDIA
