His trip actually sent a message and he inveighed on the circumstance, given that even in times of a full-blown war, the death of as many as 200 souls in one fell swoop and in a single location rankles the ear. This is not to talk of such an outrage occurring during a supposed time of peace. Hence the visit by President Bola Tinubu qualifies as a welcome show of sympathy and sharing of the grief of the bereaved with the entire country.

Besides the foregoing is the fact that this is not the first time Benue State has been turned into a killing field and witnessed such massive blood-letting by armed killers who strike defenceless rural communities literally unchallenged as if daring the country to do its worst.

For the records, this recent attack in Benue was preceded by several mass murder incidents in the state since 2001 when the Zaki Biam outrage occurred, as soldiers killed people numbering above 200 in a reprisal attack, citing the abduction and killing of 19 of their colleagues, who had earlier been involved in mediating between the warring Tiv and Jukun ethnic groups. That was followed by the 2016 massacres in Agatu community, also in Benue State, where the number of dead remains in dispute but was not less than 200. Then was the 2018 Okpokwu community massacre, also in Benue State, which claimed not less than 28 souls.

These instances provide a dark backdrop to the poignancy of the recent massacre that attracted the visit by President Bola Tinubu to Benue State.

Just as well, the series of blood-letting extends beyond Benue State to other areas of the country. For instance was the 2012 bombing incident in the Deeper Life Church in Okene, Kogi State that killed 19 souls.  There were also several other suicide bomb attacks across the country like the 2018 instance in Yola, Adamawa State when over 30 were killed and more than 80 injured. Also was the 2019 incident in Kajuru, Kaduna State just before the 2019 general polls were conducted, when at least over 141 souls were dispatched to the great beyond. If nothing else, these few incidents, among several that were unreported or reported in the media but could not be captured in this piece due to space constraint, point to a growing freedom of executing such massacres of innocent souls to appease satanic, blood-thirsty goons.

With the foregoing as a backdrop, the president seems to have capitalised on the visit to Benue State as more than a consolatory exercise but to also draw a line in the sand and send a message, given some few takeaways from that exercise. First was the masterful presentation of the day’s business by the Tor Tiv – His Royal Majesty, Professor James Ortese Iorzua Ayartse, who is also the president of the Tiv Area Traditional Council and the chairman of the Benue State Council of Chiefs.

His delivery aptly captured the lament of the bereaved community and state in a manner which a pained mourner would. Rather significant from the Tor Tiv was the acknowledgement of Bola Tinubu as the first Nigerian president to have visited a so devastated community in Benue State. Then came the turn of the president for his comments; and he did not disappoint in inveighing on a dilemma he was facing, with respect to curbing insecurity in the state, and by implication, the country.

One of the takeaways from Tinubu’s speech in Benue was his expectation that the disaster would usher in the “nucleus” of a new order of peace across the country. If for nothing, his presidential visit to the bereaved Yelwata community provides the impetus for the realisation of such an expectation; yet the peace he envisaged was not the peace of the graveyard, even as he expressed in his lamentation.  However, to achieve that peace requires a reorientation of the country’s political values beyond the current dispensation, whereby a sense of entitlement to discomfit others for personal aggrandizement guides sections of the political class to a new one of egalitarianism or all Nigerians.

Another of the significant takeaways from Tinubu’s speech was his expressed concern over the absence of arrests in respect of such a heinous instance of assault on innocent souls, where over 200 of them were dispatched to the great beyond as if they were mere animals for slaughter. According to him while referring to the IGP, “Police, I hope your men are on alert to listen to information. How come no arrest has been made? I expect there should be an arrest of those criminals.”

Such a charge from a president of a country where the law prohibits murder and extrajudicial killings, among other heinous crimes, tells more than meets the eye.  It connotes in the most basic sense that the culprits apparently act with impunity as sponsored villains above the laws of the land.

Against the backdrop of the frequency and prevalence of mindless massacres and even instances of miscarriage of justice occasioning avoidable deaths of Nigerians, that single question by President Bola Tinubu on arrests opens a vista of scenarios. Most significant of these is that routine apprehension of culprits should follow respective instances of heinous crimes, especially the massacre of Nigerians.

By and large, the culprits of these crimes are not ghosts but human beings with physical forms. This is, therefore, hoping that the country shall soon start seeing and identifying these killer goons as they face the law.