Benue State Governor Hyacinth Alia has attributed the recent wave of violent attacks in the state to foreign elements who, he claims, speak unfamiliar dialects not native to the region.
Alia made the assertion during an interview on Politics Today, a programme aired on Channels Television on Tuesday.
The state has witnessed a disturbing rise in violence in recent weeks, including the April 16 attacks on Otobi-Akpa and Emichi communities in Otukpo Local Government Area, and Utonkon in Ado LGA, where several lives were lost.
Earlier this month, youths in Otukpo staged a protest to decry the worsening security situation. The demonstrators blocked the Otukpo-Enugu highway, urging the government to take swift action against the ongoing killings and abductions.
Addressing the security crisis, Governor Alia said reports from affected communities suggest that the assailants do not speak any known local language, reinforcing fears that they may be foreigners infiltrating the state.
When pressed on the identity of the attackers, Alia stressed the need for careful assessment and intelligence gathering before assigning definitive labels, noting that the situation required precise understanding to avoid misinformation.
“Let’s have the narrative very correct. We know Nigerians—by our ethnicities, we can identify a Fulani man, a Yoruba man, a Hausa man—we know them,” Alia said.
“Even the regular traditional herders, we know them. They work with cows, herding them with sticks.
“But these folks [the attackers] are coming in fully armed with AK-47s and 49s. They do not bear the Nigerian look. They don’t speak like we do. Even the Hausa they speak is one sort of Hausa.
“It’s not the normal Hausa we Nigerians speak. So it is with the Fulani they speak. There is a trend in the language they speak, and some of our people who understand what they speak give it names.
“They say they are Malians and different from our people. But they are not Nigerians—believe it.”
Alia said the state is facing a more dangerous threat than the traditional clashes with herders previously seen in the region.
“This is the second phase we are seeing. The initial ones were with the traditional herders. The traditional herders—we had fewer troubles with them. What we are experiencing has a new, different, strange face, and it’s now alarming,” he said.
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“These terrorists are everywhere. We are under a siege. These people just come and hit and kill and run back. Where are they running to?”
The Benue governor said the attacks appear methodically carried out and are not random acts of violence.
“The way these killings are being planned and carried out is definitely coordinated; some local government areas in Benue share borders with Cameroon, and those borders are quite porous,” he said.
Alia added that intelligence gathered points to the existence of terrorist enclaves in Taraba and Nasarawa states, as well as in neighbouring parts of Cameroon.
