…wants NEMA to send relief materials

BY DANIEL IDONOR

ABUJA- GOVERNOR Gabriel Suswam of Benue State yesterday raised an alarm that the state was currently under intense pressure to rehabilitate the over 6,000 displaced persons from both Benue and Nasarawa states, following recent clashes between Tiv farmers and Fulani herdsmen.

The governor has, therefore, urged the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, to, as a matter of national security and emergency, send relief materials to the displaced people to avoid an imminent national catastrophe.

Fielding questions from newsmen after a meeting with President Jonathan, the governor said: “The unfortunate thing is that you have Fulanis both in Benue and Nasarawa states and because the crisis started between Fulanis and the Tiv farmers in Benue, most of them migrated to Nasarawa State where they were able to mobilise and launch attack into Benue.”

He, however, disclosed that the Nigerian Army had graciously moved in, adding that there was lot of security personnel around the area now.

“Even yesterday, I was with the Director-General of NEMA for them to assist me with some relief materials because I have about 6,000 refugees.

“Of this number, more than half are children and out of the remaining half, three quarter are women. So you can imagine that is a serious situation,” the governor said.

He said since the bloodbath, he had met with the Governor of Nasarawa State and “we have put everything humanly possible to make sure that there is peace; it is actually not a conflict between Benue and Nasarawa states.

”So what we are trying to do is to try to substantially calm down the Fulanis and Tivs who are  displaced because the Fulanis moved into Nasarawa and we have substantial number of Tivs who are indigenes of Nasarawa State.

“They also begin to attack those ones and those ones also moved into Benue. So you have indigenes of Nasarawa State who are now refugees in Benue”.