The people in Benue community are still in shock, and alarmed by Good Friday’s horrendous armed herdsmen murder of about 40 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and members of their host community in a camp at the LGEA Primary School Mgban, in Nyiev Council Ward of Guma Local Government Area, Local Government Area of Benue State.
It was reported that on that fateful day, and according to an eyewitness, the armed marauders stormed the community, which had a police checkpoint located directly opposite the camp on the stretch of the Makurdi-Lafia road, at about 9 pm in the night and started shooting sporadically, after obviously overpowering the police personnel on stop-and-search duty at the time.
While a 35-year-old nursing mother of three, whose name was given as Mnena Okega, was narrating how her 10 years old daughter was killed, she said they had all gone to sleep inside the classrooms where they do sleep when they suddenly started hearing gunshots from all directions, as nobody knew what was happening. She started shouting the names of her children and urging them to wake up and run, as her first daughter, who was 10 years old, was among the first to escape through the window but, unfortunately for her, she ran into the armed men who were moving around searching for who to kill.
She said, “When one of them caught her, my daughter begged for her life but, they still cut her throat while I watched. Even as she cried for help pleading that they should spare her, one of them pulled out his knife and slashed the throat of my innocent daughter. This was a sight no mother would want to see. They killed my daughter who cried and begged for her live. They cut her throat like an animal.”
Further talking, she said she thought they would spare her because, she was of young age but, she thought wrongly, as she was eventually killed brutally.
•Source: Vanguard Newspaper
