The APC 2023 Senatorial Candidate for Benue South, Comrade Daniel Onjeh, has emphatically posited that a thousand cows are not worth the life of a single human. Onjeh made the assertion yesterday, 29th June, 2022 at the Ojapo Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Camp, where he visited to commiserate with victims of the Sunday, 12th June 2022 dastardly attack on Igama, Edumoga Ehaje Community of Okpokwu Local Government by suspected killer herdsmen.
Com. Onjeh and his team were received by the Leader of the Ojapo IDPs Camp, Hon. Daniel Abah, who also led the team on a brief tour of the camp site.
Describing the living conditions at the camp as deplorable, Com. Onjeh made a cash donation to the IDPs to assist with their medicals, feeding and other essential logistics.
In the course of the visit, Onjeh met with the widow of Hon. Christian Anyebe, the APC Ward Auditor of Ojigo, who was killed during the macabre attack on Igama Community by suspected Fulani herdsmen.
Moved by the plight of the young widow, who wept uncontrollably as she held on to her twin children, Emmanuel and Emmanuella, Com. Onjeh instantly declared full academic scholarship up to Secondary School level for the twins, and equally extended the kind gesture to their three other siblings.
In his address, Com. Onjeh observed that the physical and social conditions at the Ojapo IDPs Camp necessitate the delivery of not just foodstuff, but medical supplies, beddings and sanitary items to the IDPs.
Hence, he implored Government at all levels; corporate organizations and affluent benevolent individuals to assist the IDPs with the delivery of medicals and other vital logistics to enhance their comfort at the camp, while hoping that urgent actions would be taken to improve the security situation in their respective communities, so that they could return to their homes.
The APC 2023 Senatorial Candidate further took the opportunity of the visit to vehemently condemn the attack on the Edumoga Ehaje Community by suspected murderous herdsmen, while calling on Government to ensure that it leaves no stone unturned in fishing-out the culprits of the attack and ensuring that they face the full wrath of the law.
Commenting further at the occasion, Com. Onjeh noted that a thousand cows were not worth the life of a single human being. While charging members of the Edumoga Community to ensure that they continue to live peacefully with; and avoid all acts of provocation on the Fulani herders resident in their community, Onjeh noted that the Idomas in Edumoga, like other parts of Idoma land, have accepted and accommodated the Fulanis in their communities for several years, adding that it was unfair and inhumane for the Fulanis to repay them with gruesome attacks, killings and destruction of their properties and farmlands.
As a panacea to the recurrent herders’ – farmers’ conflicts and subsequent dastardly attacks by the Fulanis on their host communities, Com. Onjeh advised the leaders of the Fulanis to repose confidence in the leaders of the Idoma communities, and in the event of an attack on any of the Fulanis or their cattle, they should liaise with the leaders of the Idoma community involved to fish-out the culprits and make them pay for their misdeeds.
Onjeh noted further that since the cows were being reared by the Fulanis for sale in the long run, if any Idoma person kills a cow, the culprit should be identified and made to pay the full cost of the cow, along with any other damages that would be mutually agreed upon by the leaders of the Fulani and Idoma communities; rather than unleashing mayhem indiscriminately on the entire Idoma community as reprisal attack for killing a cow.
He noted that in the same vein, if a herd of cattle grazes on any Idoma person’s farm, the victim should promptly report the matter to the leaders of the Idoma community involved, who would in-turn liaise with the leaders of the Fulani community to fish-out the owners of the cattle, and make to culprits pay full compensation to the affected farmer. This, Com. Onjeh noted, is a better path to lasting solution than attacking and killing the cows that graze on the native’s farmlands.
Onjeh noted however that no amount of provocation by the Edumoga people justified the barbaric attack and mindless killings by the Fulani herdsmen on the scale recently witnessed in the hitherto quiet and peaceful Igama village.
Earlier in his address, the Leader of the Ojapo IDPs Camp, Hon. Daniel Abah, a former Councilor Representing Ojigo Ward at the Okpokwu Legislative Council, appreciated Com. Onjeh for the visit, and stated that contrary to the misleading narratives Onjeh might have heard regarding the motives of the Fulani herders’ attack on Igama Community, the members of the community neither attacked any Fulani nor killed any of their cows. Rather, it was a conflict between members of a particular family and a group of Fulani herders, who led their cattle into the Idoma family’s farmland and ravaged large portions of their cassava farm. In the process, an altercation occurred between members of the particular family and the herders leading to a violent confrontation, which was however promptly resolved by the intervention of passers-by.
But the Fulanis later mobilized en masse and attacked the entire Igama Community at an unholy hour, killing indiscriminately and razing residents’ houses. In a related development, Com. Onjeh also visited the family home of Paul Ojile and Agbo Onogwu, the two cousins that were killed earlier on 18th June, 2022, by suspected Fulani terrorists at Orokam, Ogbadibo L.G.A. of Benue State. Whereas Paul Ojile was an elected PDP Councilor awaiting swearing-in, his cousin, Agbo Onogwu, was a youth local vigilante member.
They both met their fatal ends in the forests of Ogbadibo while on a mission with others to rescue a Fulani kidnap victim named Mr. Raphael Okpe, also known as Popular. Addressing journalists after the visit, Com. Onjeh charged the relevant Security Agencies and the Nigerian Judiciary, to rise-up to their statutory responsibilities so that the people can repose confidence in them.
He further expressed condolences to all the victims of Fulani militia attack/kidnapping across Idoma land, while urging that all the suspected Fulani militia and kidnappers currently in police custody should be diligently investigated and prosecuted; and made to face the maximum penalties for their crimes as a deterrent to others. Signed, Hon. Maxwell Ogiri, Director of Media, Onjeh Campaign Organization
