Benue Bleeds While Tinubu Talks Reconciliation: Is the Pogrom a Cover for a Political War?

In what is fast becoming Nigeria’s most chilling chapter of silent ethnic cleansing, the carnage in Benue State is taking a sinister political dimension—and prominent political commentator and Ebonyi State PDP chieftain, Nwoba Chika Nwoba, is calling out what many fear to whisper.

According to Nwoba, the so-called reconciliation advice handed down by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to Governor Hyacinth Alia in response to the blood-soaked atrocities in Benue isn’t just misplaced—it’s damning evidence that the killings are no longer just a case of herders versus farmers. They are, in fact, the latest battleground in a vicious power tussle between godfather and godson.

“Who are you reconciling with? Armed herdsmen?” Nwoba thundered in a no-holds-barred critique posted on Monday. “Are they not criminals that should be deleted from existence? Why negotiate with killers unless their guns are being fueled by political interests?”

Nwoba’s statement casts a glaring spotlight on the less-discussed, darker underbelly of the Benue massacres: a calculated attempt by political forces to render the state ungovernable. He draws direct links between the raging bloodshed and an unresolved political crisis between Governor Alia and his godfather—an undisclosed but widely known figure who has held the state in his grip since 2007.

“The bloodbath is not just about grazing routes,” Nwoba writes. “It’s about control. Total control. And Governor Alia’s refusal to be a puppet is what has set off this tragic power play.”

Nwoba’s analysis doesn’t spare President Tinubu either. He accuses the President of playing a dangerous balancing act—torn between defending a loyal ally cloaked in religious righteousness and appeasing powerful internal actors within his own party.

“If the governor were in a different political party,” Nwoba warned, “he would have been served the Rivers chalice long ago.” But because it’s all happening within the ruling APC, the presidency is treading carefully, afraid to upset a power matrix that could unravel disastrously.

Observers now fear that the call for “reconciliation” is nothing more than political doublespeak—a euphemism for caving to the demands of a political godfather, while innocent lives continue to be harvested in broad daylight.

“The moment the godfather-godson impasse is resolved,” Nwoba predicts, “the killings will magically stop.”

Benue’s pain, it seems, is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a blood-soaked chessboard where power, loyalty, and silence are the deadliest weapons—and the people are nothing but pawns.

As the nation watches in muted horror, the question remains: how many more must die before the real war—the political war—is called by its true name?