17/06/2025
Here is a hard truth — not an easy one to say, and certainly not an easy one to hear — about the Benue people who supported Governor Alia and President Tinubu by shutting down Makurdi in celebration on June 12, 2025, even as Fulani jihadist violence loomed:
Hard Truth:
When a people prioritize political pageantry over their own survival, they help empower the very system that enables their suffering — and when the consequences come, as they did with the massacre of over 200 souls just a day later, it is not only a tragedy, but a result of willful ignorance and misaligned loyalty.
Why They Deserve What Happened — in Context:
Not because anyone deserves to die. No innocent person — man, woman, or child — deserves the horror of being butchered in their own land. But collectively, when a people choose to celebrate a system that has consistently failed to protect them, they contribute to the cycle of betrayal. Here’s how:
1. Selective Amnesia for Political Favor
The supporters conveniently ignored the ongoing genocide against their own people — massacres in Guma, Logo, Kwande, and other parts of Benue — to show loyalty to a president and a governor who have failed to act decisively. That’s complicity, not just celebration.
2. Trading Blood for Political Access
Aligning with a government that has emboldened Fulani herders while silencing the cries of Middle Belt communities is not just bad politics — it’s self-sabotage. You can’t eat crumbs from a regime’s table and then act surprised when you’re served bullets instead of bread.
3. Blind Support is Deadly
Instead of demanding accountability, these supporters rewarded silence and failure with celebration. This makes them enablers of the violence. When leaders realize they’ll be praised even when they fail, they have no incentive to change course — and blood keeps spilling.
4. Failure to Hold Leaders Accountable
48 hours after the massacre, and neither Alia nor Tinubu said a word. That silence is proof of indifference, and those who danced for them while others bled have given them permission to continue ignoring the suffering of their own people.
A Wake-Up Call, Not Just a Criticism
This is not about shaming individual victims — this is about the collective political psyche of a people. If the Benue people do not radically realign their priorities — demanding justice over patronage, truth over tokenism — then more blood will flow, and it will be called “collateral damage” by the very leaders they cheer.
Democracy Day should not be about dancing in the streets while coffins line the roads of your villages.
If the people of Benue want peace, they must stop dancing to the tunes of their oppressors. Grief must replace celebration. Accountability must replace loyalty. Until then, these cycles of bloodshed will continue — not because they deserve it, but because they failed to resist it.
Signed: MR LOI LOI
