There is blood in the Benue. The river that once gave life to the valley now flows with the blood of the innocent. In the fields of Yelewata, the forests of Gwer, and the plains of Guma, the Benue earth is soaked red. The killings are no longer counted in ones and twos. They come in hundreds. The killers come with rage. They come with hate. They come with guns, machetes, and fire. And when they leave, grief and silence overhang the air, interrupted only by the wails of the bereaved and the sound of hurried mass burials. It was the late, great American poet, Langston Hughes, who, in his poem, ‘

The Negro Speaks of Rivers’, evoked the timelessness of water that echoes through history: “I’ve known rivers… ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” In his hands, rivers became the repositories of memory, of sorrow, of endurance. And there, in the meandering course of the Benue, grief gathers like silt in its depths, silent, steady, and fresh. The Benue carries not just water, but citizens’ blood, ache, lament, and the slow erosion of joy. Like Hughes’ soul, the soul of Benue has grown deep with the weight of grief, layered in weeks and months of mourning and sad memories.

The people of Benue are not strangers to attacks. For years, their land has been the battlefield of blood. But what is happening now is beyond the pale. What is being witnessed now is premeditated mass murders, organised and systematic butchery. It is the quiet extermination of a people who dare to remain on their ancestral land. Every new attack feels like a scene from a horror movie. Survivors, still trembling with fear, speak of marauding herdsmen. They speak of Fulanis dressed in black, some in military camouflage, others on motorcycles. They come at night. They strike when villagers are deep in sleep. They do not spare women. They do not spare children. Their aim is not only conquest. It is erasure. It is terror as statecraft.

In a saner country, the weight of this tragedy would have broken the news cycle. National flags would fly at half-mast. There would be emergency security meetings. Security chiefs would be summoned. But in our country, silence has become the soundtrack of grief. No one flinches anymore. Not the government. Not the institutions. Not the church. A few days ago, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Olufemi Oloyede, arrived in Benue with fanfare. The sort reserved for a political campaign, not a national security crisis. He posed for photos, accompanied by glitz, glam and razzmatazz. He met with the officials of the state government. He issued statements. But the dastardly killings did not stop. In fact, they increased. His presence made no difference. To many, it was another choreographed performance in the theatre of impunity.

The presidency eventually broke cover. But only to justify the carnage. It called the killings “reprisal attacks.” A cold, calculated phrase that strips the dead of their humanity. A phrase that suggests the slaughter of children is somehow a legitimate response. A phrase that blames the victims and absolves the killers. This is the same rhetorical tactic we’ve seen over and over again. From Southern Kaduna to Plateau, from Zamfara to Sokoto. Whenever blood flows in Christian or minority communities, the language of the state changes. Genocide becomes “reprisal.” Massacres become “communal clashes.” It is a deliberate distortion. A way of numbing public outrage and avoiding accountability. 

Where, then, is the Governor? Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia, once seen as a moral voice, has been mute. The priest turned politician has chosen to sit on his hands and hide in plain sight while the Benue people perish. When citizens took to the streets to peacefully protest the killings over the weekend, he unleashed thugs on them. This is a man ordained to protect life and truth. He now seems more interested in protecting power.

But while the Governor hides, the Vatican sees and speaks. In his Sunday Angelus prayer, Pope Leo, thousands of kilometres away, spoke more boldly than our country’s leadership. He condemned the killings. He prayed for the dead. Hear him. “I am praying for security, justice, and peace in Nigeria… In a special way, I am thinking of the rural Christian communities of Benue State, who have been relentless victims of violence”. He called on the government to act. It is a damning indictment when the Pope shows more concern than a sitting President or a State Governor. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), however, remains a disappointment.

It has neither called for justice nor comforted the grieving. Its leaders have not visited the affected communities. They have not held vigils. They have not issued statements of outrage. Their silence is as loud as the gunshots echoing across Benue. And their silence is complicity. Why has CAN gone quiet? Could it be that the politics of access and privilege now matter more than the Gospel? Could it be that contracts and photo-ops with politicians have replaced advocacy for the persecuted? The faithful are left wondering whether their shepherds have abandoned the flock. But my friend and brother, Apostle Suleman Johnson, has parted ways with his tongue-tied pastoral brethren. 

Where many have chosen the refuge of ambiguity or the comfort of the pulpit’s neutrality, he has spoken with moral clarity and prophetic courage. He has called upon our fellow citizens not to fold their arms in the face of annihilation, but to rise in lawful self-defence. “Self-defence is enshrined in the Constitution,” he declared with the weight of conscience. “I said it when I went to Jos and Benue… we cannot sit back and watch this continue. PEOPLE OF BENUE, DEFEND YOURSELVES. What is happening in Benue State is evil, barbaric, and sheer mayhem.” In the age of retreating valour and muffled truth, his voice rings out like a psalm of resistance, a lament against slaughter, and a call to conscience.

There is a conspiracy of silence in our country. A silence woven by politicians, religious leaders, security chiefs, and media houses. It is the silence of appeasement. The silence of cowardice. The silence of those who know but refuse to speak. And in that silence, evil grows bolder. Benue is not just another state. It is the Food Basket of our country. It is the cultural heartbeat of the Middle Belt. Its people, Tiv, Idoma, Itulo, and Igede, are proud, resilient and peace-loving. But how long can a people endure repeated slaughter without breaking? The killings are pushing Benue to the edge. Villages are being emptied. 

They have also become wastelands. Farmlands are being abandoned. Schools and hospitals have been shut. Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps are swelling beyond capacity. Children are growing up without homes. Women are becoming widows in their twenties. The cost is not just human. It is existential. Benue State is grieving. Survivors are weeping. Yet, there is no national mourning. No urgent call to action. No solemn remembrance of the dead. Our country will move on, as it always does, until another round of killings breaks out. In the cycle of killings, grief becomes seasonal. Mourning, selective. Some lives are worth more than others.

But, our country must not move on. 

Our citizens must not allow amnesia win. They must remember the names of the dead. They must hold space for the living. They must demand justice. For justice is the only balm that can heal the wounds of Benue. The killings must end. But ending the killings will take more than security operations. It will require moral courage. It will require confronting the truth: that the killers are conquistadors, aided by power, in search of fertile lands to establish possession, ownership and identity. It will require prosecuting the perpetrators and dismantling the networks that fund them. It will require political will from Abuja and integrity from Makurdi. Benue deserves peace. Not peace of the graveyard, peace as the absence of violence. But peace rooted in justice and dignity. Peace that allows children to sleep without fear. Peace that allows farmers to return to their lands. Peace that is not negotiated on the blood of the innocent. The world is watching. The Vatican is praying. The bereaved are waiting. History is recording. The question history will ask is simple: when Benue bled, what did our country and its citizens do? Did they speak or stay silent? Did they act or look away?

Justice delayed is not just denied. It is dangerous. It emboldens the killers. It demoralises the victims. It destroys the moral fabric of the nation. Benue cannot become another footnote in our country’s long history of bloodletting. It must become the turning point. A place where our country finally said, “Enough”. The killings in Benue are not just a tragedy. They are a test. A test of leadership. A test of citizenship. A test of our collective humanity.

There is blood in the Benue, thick, unrelenting, and unforgotten. The river that once sustained the people now carries the crimson evidence of their slaughter. In Yelewata’s ravaged fields, Gwer’s haunted forests, and across the silent plains of Guma, Benue earth bears witness to horrors. The killings no longer arrive as isolated tragedies; they descend like storms, merciless, organised, and relentless. They bring fire and steel; they leave behind smoke, ash, and the shattered remnants of lives. 

As dusk falls over the valley, it is not nighttime prayers or the laughter of children that echo through the land, but the dirges of the grieving and shovels digging mass graves. Benue has become the  valley of death. Yet even now, in the face of state indifference, citizens must remember: silence is complicity. The dead cry out not only for justice, but for remembrance. And it falls to every citizen to answer with truth, with outrage, and with the unyielding demand that this river of blood be stemmed.

Our country and its citizens must not fail the people of Benue.

Abdul Mahmud is a human rights attorney in Abuja