A fresh wave of terror has swept through Ohimini Local Government Area of Benue State, as suspected armed herdsmen launched back-to-back assaults on two communities, leaving several people dead and about 30 others unaccounted for, residents and local sources say.
The violence began when gunmen invaded the Ochobo community, killing two people in an attack that residents describe as sudden and merciless. Emboldened, or perhaps undeterred, the attackers then turned their sights on the neighboring community of Agadagba.
Their first attempt was beaten back. Residents, apparently forewarned or simply alert to the danger closing in around them, mounted a defence that repelled the initial incursion, a rare moment of resistance in a region that has grown grimly familiar with such raids.
But the reprieve was short-lived. On Saturday evening, the gunmen returned, this time in greater force or with greater resolve, and opened fire on Agadagba without warning. Several residents were killed. As night fell over the community, an estimated 30 people remained missing, their fate unknown.
Speaking from a hiding place, one resident described scenes of chaos as the attackers stormed the community.
“They came shooting sporadically. Many people were killed, while several others escaped into the bush,” the source said, adding that dozens of residents had scattered into the surrounding bush and had not been heard from since.
The uncertainty hanging over Agadagba is perhaps the cruelest part of the ordeal: families do not know whether missing relatives are alive in hiding, wounded, or among the dead a limbo that search parties and community leaders will now have to work through in the coming days.
This latest attack does not occur in isolation. Ohimini and neighboring Otukpo Local Government Area have endured a punishing string of assaults by suspected armed herdsmen in recent weeks. At least 18 people were killed in separate attacks on communities in Otukpo LGA in mid-July after gunmen struck Akpachi village in Ugboju community and, roughly 24 hours later, the Otukpo-Nobi community.
Authorities have suggested that the wave of violence may have been organized reprisal attacks by ethnic militias.
Just last week, residents of the Ankpechi community along the Otukpo-Ogobia Road in Ohimini were thrown into panic after suspected armed herdsmen invaded the area, shot a resident, and looted shops. That attack, like others before it, went officially unconfirmed by police for some time, underscoring residents’ recurring complaints about slow or absent state response.
The broader unrest has also been linked by some officials to the killing of a prominent herders’ leader. The Chairman of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria in Benue State, Alhaji Ardo Risku Mohammed, was ambushed and killed alongside a companion in the Otukpo area while returning from a peace meeting, an incident authorities say may have triggered a cycle of retaliatory violence still playing out across the local government area.
Anger over the killings has repeatedly spilled into the streets, with grieving youths and residents marching to the palace of the Och’Idoma, the paramount ruler of the Idoma people, demanding stronger federal and state intervention.
As of this report, the Benue State Police Command had not issued an official statement on the Ochobo and Agadagba attacks. Security operatives are expected to be deployed to comb the surrounding bush for the missing, following the pattern of previous responses in the local government area.
For the residents of Agadagba, the coming hours will be spent not in mourning alone but in searching for neighbors, for relatives, for anyone still lost in the bush who might yet be found alive.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Fresh herdsmen attacks in Ohimini LGA, Benue State, have left several dead and about 30 people missing after gunmen struck the Ochobo and then Agadagba communities the second time in one weekend. Benue South has been hit.
This isn’t an isolated incident but part of an escalating, unresolved cycle of reprisal violence that has killed dozens across the same local government area in recent weeks, with security forces consistently arriving after the fact.
Until root causes, including retaliation tied to the killing of a local herders’ leader, are addressed, communities in the area remain exposed to repeat attacks.
