An Allegations that members of their associations were responsible for the killing of 5,138 Benue residents while Governor Samuel Ortom was in office have been deemed “baseless” and “untrue” by the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore Fulani sociocultural organization and the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria.
This is a vehement response to a statement made on Monday by Dr. Emmanuel Shior, Executive Secretary of the Benue State Emergency and Management Agency, in which he claimed that suspected herders in the state were to blame for these residents’ deaths.
This was said by the SEMA director in a press conference on the state’s humanitarian crisis eight years after the Ortom-led administration took office in the state’s capital, Markurdi.
Shior stated that suspected armed herders had assaulted 18 of the state’s 23 local government units, and that 5,138 people had been slain since 2015.
He claims that 1,177 deaths were reported in 2015, 809 deaths occurred in 2016, 43 deaths occurred in 2017, and 440 deaths occurred in 2018.