The Bonta village in Konshisha Local Government and the Ukpute community in Oju Local Government Areas of Benue State are experiencing a worsening communal strife.
Over a disputed piece of property, which claimed countless lives and properties, including the lives of 12 military members on Easter Monday in 2021, the two neighboring villages have been embroiled in a crisis.
On Monday, information surfaced that armed militias from the Bonta village had closed a main route that connected Oju and Makurdi, preventing any member of the Igede tribe from reaching the state capital.
The Oju and Obi Local Government areas are home to the Igede tribe, which is the third largest tribe in Benue State.
Armed militias on the road have, according to Dr. John Ogi, a senior lecturer at Benue State University, “disconnected Igede from other parts of the state.”
Ogi emphasized that it was currently hard to transport products and services from the Igede territory to other regions of the state.
A “journey of 2 hours from Oju to Makurdi now takes 7 hours,” he emphasized, adding that the only other route from Oju is the severely damaged Otukpo road.
The professor said that in July 2024, the militias had taken control of “two trailers of fertilizers distributed by the federal government to Oju/Obi Federal constituency.”
Governor Hyacinth Alia recently said that there was a modicum of calm in the warring areas and insisted that the government was making a lot of effort to settle the conflict.
The state police command was contacted, but Catherine Sewuese, the police public relations officer, was unable to provide a response.