Benue now calm, Police commissioner Owoseni reveals, appeals to residents

The Commissioner of Police in Benue, Fatai Owoseni, has revealed how a notorious and wanted militia leader, Terwase Akwaza, popularly called Gana allegedly took advantage of the crisis in the state to launch attacks on communities.

Owoseni made the revelation on Monday, January 29, saying normalcy had been restored in all the communities attacked by herdsmen and appealed to residents to stop fleeing their homes.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports Owoseni as saying that police officers were doing their best to enable all the displaced persons return to their homes.

He reportedly added that they would collaborate with members of the public to achieve this.

The police commissioner said that the state was now calm, just as he added that the law enforcement agency had strengthened its partnership with sister security agencies and the people for the purpose of ending the crisis.

“You may provide all the security for the people, but as an individual you need to choose whether you are secure or not, some of these things are issues of perception.

“Most of the people living in the state are in panic and once you panic, you are most likely to die before your death.

“The people living along the border communities are very safe; people have started returning to their communities, especially in Logo where some communities celebrated church services in their areas for the first time since the beginning of this crisis.

“We are working with the communities because the kind of attack being recorded here, the hit and run attacks, look like asymmetric warfare like a guerilla warfare, so we need the people in the community to effectively help to gather intelligence.

“What we have in Ukum is a pure case of bandits, before my arrival in the state last week, there were already some communal fighting between some criminal groups between Ukum and Shitile.

“The notorious bandit, Ghana, that was declared wanted by the state has taken advantage of it; they have attacked our security point in the area and two officers were killed and the house of security adviser to Governor Samuel Ortom was burnt down.

“There were attacks and counter attacks in the area that was why we deployed officers to the area,” he said.