It’s the season of rain in Nigeria. But in Benue, the soil isn’t basking in golden rays or being nourished by June’s downpour. Instead, it is soaked: soaked in the blood of over 200 innocent people, brutally massacred. Benue, one of the nation’s largest food-producing states, has turned from a cradle of harvest to a field of death.

This subtle war has been ongoing for years, with countless lives lost. And many more may soon meet the same cruel fate at the hands of these terrorists. According to Kabir Adamu, head of Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, 1,043 people have died in Benue between May 2023 and May 2025. Let that sink in over a thousand lives, erased.

Benue has become the epicenter of a conflict between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers, a battle over land, grazing routes, and survival. But this conflict has evolved beyond resource tension. It has evolved into targeted violence, mass displacement, and widespread fear. In the nation’s so-called Middle Belt, this has become the norm.

So far, the national system has failed Benue.

How can a country sit idly while its citizens are burned in their homes, gunned down in their farms, or slaughtered in churches? Youths are crying. Mothers are wailing. Children ripped from their mothers’ breasts. Families shattered. And still, the killings go on.

According to the International Crisis Group, over 60,000 people have been displaced in Benue this year alone. Camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are overcrowded and under-resourced. These are not isolated attacks. It is pure violence motivated by a climate of impunity.

Rapid population growth has further intensified the competition for land. Religion adds another layer of division- most of the Fulani herders are Muslim, while the farming communities in Benue are predominantly Christian. In this one-sided slaughter, I often wonder: is this a religious war wearing the mask of a land dispute? Or is it simply blood for cattle and silence as permission?

We must ask the hard questions. Where is the federal government in all of this? Why have the perpetrators of these mass killings not been apprehended or brought to justice? Why does Benue bleed, and no one seems to care?

The longer this violence is normalized, the more fractured our nation becomes. Mothers who’ll never see their sons again, fathers buried beside their children, communities wiped from the map.

Whatever the reason, whether land, cattle, religion, or politics, death should never be the answer.

And silence? Silence is complicity.

If the blood of a thousand is not enough to stir action, then perhaps this is not a nation bleeding.

Let the silence break. Let the world hear because every death we ignore today will knock louder tomorrow.