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An environmental consultant, architect Patrick Ukura, said his ancestral home, utilities and other houses had been razed in two months due to communal clashes.
He lamented that the Benue State Government has failed in its statutory responsibility to protect the lives and properties of rural dwellers.
Ukura, who hails from the Akpa community of Mbakor, Tarka Local Government Area of the state, said the state government had remained docile while his relatives in Akpa-Mbakor were killed and their properties worth millions of Naira destroyed in the last two months.
In a statement issued to journalists in Abuja on Thursday, Ukura decried “the failure of the state government to adopt a decisive approach to end the crisis”.
He said the crisis between Akpa and Agasha in Guma Local Government Area has already claimed the lives of several innocent lives of the indigenous people of Mbakor.
According to him, as long as the crisis between the two hitherto peaceful communities persists, the regional government has deliberately refused to act.
Ukura further said the state government is making huge political capital out of the current crisis; hence his “laissez-faire approach towards the communal clash which claimed the lives of several innocent citizens, especially those from Tarka Local Government Area”.
He called on the federal government to intervene and save its people from further carnage to protect the sanctity of human lives.
Ukura further said that the efforts of stakeholders in the area, including Governor Alia Commissioners for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Terlumun Dwem, and for Housing, Roy Ashirga, as well as Tor Lobi, HRH Mfave Anagende and Tor Jemgbah, HRH Afatyo Ajoko, President General Mzough-u-Tiv, Comdr. A. Agbecha (retired), among others, also failed to produce fruitful results.
He said: “Why has the Benue State Government failed in its primary responsibility to safeguard the lives and properties of its citizens for so long? More worrying are the failed attempts by critical stakeholders, including Commissioner Terlumun Dwem. How can the Benue State Government allow this crisis to persist? The livelihoods of my people are being destroyed every day, but the government doesn’t care. Why play politics with human lives?”
It was gathered that a crisis erupted between the two communities over the unauthorized burial of a dead body in Akpa-Mbakor’s ancestral land on 5 August 2026 and continued unabated, resulting in loss of lives and destruction of property.
