By Shaakaa Stephanie Sewuese 

They are killing us, and this is what the Presidency is saying? With due respect, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, this press release is an insult. It fails to match even a fraction of the horror unfolding in Benue State. Entire villages are being wiped out. Families butchered. Children buried in shallow graves, hundreds burnt alive. Yet, from the comfort of Abuja, what we receive is a recycled, lifeless statement that tiptoes around the truth.

Let’s dispense with the euphemisms. Let’s ask plainly.

1. Who exactly are the “warring parties”?

Are you referring to the peaceful villagers slaughtered in their sleep? The farmers were chased off their land by bullets and machetes? Or is this deliberate vagueness this cowardly diplomacy designed to shield the real aggressors? There is a profound difference between self-defense and unprovoked invasion. Say their names. Be specific.

2. Why frame these atrocities as “reprisal attacks”?

This narrative is dishonest. It distorts the reality we’ve witnessed for years, heavily armed invaders descend on communities, massacre women, children, and the elderly, then disappear. Yet somehow, they are painted as victims avenging wrongs. This is not conflict. It’s a one-sided extermination, and to call it anything else is to spit on the graves of the dead.

3. What “earlier directive” are you now renewing?

If there was a prior order, it clearly failed horrifically. People are still being slaughtered. Was that directive shelved? Ignored? Why is there no accountability for its failure? Repeating old words while fresh blood is spilled is not leadership, it is negligence.

4. Is Governor Alia expected to convene peace meetings over open graves?

You task him with reconciliation, but how do you reconcile while bodies are still being dragged from bushes? What kind of peace is possible without justice without naming, shaming, and prosecuting the killers? Telling a bereaved people to dialogue is cruelty masquerading as diplomacy.

5. And what about the victims?

Where in that statement is a whisper of condolence? A flicker of grief? A trace of human empathy? This was a massacre at least 200 lives, according to the Vatican yet your words remain cold, bureaucratic, and numb. What kind of nation do we live in, where mass death is met with dead language?

If this horror doesn’t move you, then I fear what is left of your soul. No heart that still beats should watch this carnage and remain unmoved.

Instead of naming evil, we are calling it “conflict.” Instead of calling out genocide, we’re appealing for “calm.” And while this government offers hollow orders and dusty promises, Benue drowns in blood.

Mr Bayo Onanugwa respectfully, what conflict?

What reprisal?

Who struck the first blow?

Who has consistently turned farms into killing fields and homes into ashes?

Mr. President, if your understanding of the crisis is built on such a false foundation, if you are relying on this twisted narrative, then your interventions will always miss the mark.

You cannot solve what you refuse to name. You cannot protect those you pretend are not victims.

The “earlier directive” you now want to re-implement what was it? Did it ever materialize? Or was it shelved like every other promise made to people whose screams never seem to reach the Villa?

And now, to ask Governor Alia to “convene peace meetings” while the soil is still wet with blood what kind of peace can grow from injustice? You cannot dialogue with demons mid-slaughter. You cannot stretch hands of peace over open graves.

And what about the victims? Not a single line acknowledging their humanity. No grief. No condolence. Just a mechanical regurgitation of statecraft laced with blame-the-victim rhetoric.

Enough is enough, you say?

Then act like it.

Send justice, not just soldiers.

Send arrests, not just condolences.

Send truth, not politically correct silence.

Because if you don’t, history will remember not only those who pulled the trigger but those who looked away those who twisted language until killers became “warring parties” and corpses became “collateral damage.”

To those defending this evil, because you stand to gain today may your reward be the pain you’ve nurtured. The quote says it best: “The evil you support today because of what you stand to gain is the fertiliser that will nurture your future pain.” That day will come. And when it does, may you find no one left to speak for you the way you failed to speak for Benue.

This is not politics. This is not propaganda. This is not sabotage.

This is truth. And truth, like a seed, always finds its way through even the hardest ground.

Worse still, the people advising the president appear to have fed him lies, distortions, and contradictions. Governor Alia has spun a web of inconsistencies blaming Fulani cow killings one day, ECOWAS the next, and Abuja elites soon after.

Mr Governor, what exactly are you not telling us?

Mr Governor, on Channels Television, you said the armed herders terrorizing Benue are foreigners. But just a few days ago, that wasn’t the story. So, which version should we believe? Are these so-called foreign killers ghosts? Who opened the borders for them? Who is feeding them intelligence? Who arms them? Who protects them from being arrested? Are we to believe that foreigners now move freely within our borders, slaughtering villagers and returning untouched?

You told the world that 59 people were killed. But how do we reconcile that with the reality on the ground? The media reported at least 200 lives lost. The Pope himself was told 200. Very Dark Man counted bodies and said it was far more than that. So who is lying? And why?

Why are the numbers being downplayed? To protect whose image? At what cost? Are human lives now disposable footnotes in political strategy?

Why is it that it took a civilian like Very Dark Man, not even a journalist by profession, to show us the scale of this horror? What he did for Benue in one day his honesty, his courage, his empathy even the most reputable media houses did not and perhaps could not do. What does that say about the institutions we rely on? What does that say about us?

Where are the aerial shots from NTA? Where is the outrage from the government? Where is the empathy from Abuja? From Makurdi? From Aso Rock?

Who is crying for the mothers who buried their children with bare hands or who could not bury their children at all? For the fathers who could not protect their homes? For the children whose last sight was a blade or a bullet?

And most of all where is the plan? What’s next after condolences and denial? Do we just move on, again?

To our leaders, if this was your village, your hometown, your family, would 59 feel like an acceptable number? Would you still say it so calmly?

How do you sleep at night knowing your people are dying in the most gruesome way imaginable, and the only response is statistics, silence, and sometimes, spin?

We are not just asking for answers. We are asking for truth, for accountability, for justice and above all, for compassion.

At what point does this administration stop listening to spin doctors and start listening to the victims?

Let’s not forget, President Tinubu promised continuity. And this press statement proves it word for word, it feels like a leftover from Buhari’s archives, maybe even typed on Garba Shehu’s old laptop. Recycled phrases. Recycled failures. Recycled indifference.

Do not blame citizens for losing faith in the government. Do not accuse them of sabotage when they speak the truth. If stating the facts makes you look bad, perhaps it is because the facts are bad. The truth is not the enemy. Silence is.

We remember how former Governor Ortom was mocked, dismissed, and branded a propagandist. But now, his warnings echo louder than ever. He saw this nightmare coming and begged the world to look. Instead, we looked away.

And now we are here.

There is no neutrality when lives are being lost. There is no balance in a massacre. If your precious political correctness matters more than the sanctity of human life, then let’s be honest, you are not just a coward, you are complicit.

This is not a crisis of security. It is a crisis of truth. A crisis of conscience.

And history will not forget.

Because while the Presidency offered press statements, the people of Benue were digging graves.

A government that tiptoes around a massacre has already picked a side and it’s not with the victims.

History will remember who kept quiet while graves were dug.

Stephanie Shaakaa can be reached on her email via shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com