Benue killings: Tinubu’s wife N1bn donation tears Benue IDPs apart

..Yelwata IDPs protest, demand to go back to ancestral homes

From Attah Ede, Makurdi 

Thousands of  Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from different camps including the one at Yelewata community in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State, Wednesday, staged a protest over maltreatments, starvation  and non access to medical facility in camps.

The displaced people in their large numbers barricaded the  Benue-Nasarawa federal highway in Makurdi, demanding to be decamped and go back to their ancestral homes following the alleged hardships they are experiencing.

The protest is coming barely 24 hours  after the first lady of Nigeria, Senator Oluremi visited Benue and donated N1bn to IDPs in the State.

The IDPs protesters predominantly victims of June 13th 2025, attacks by suspected herdsmen, were seen chanting “We want to go back home”, “we are hungry, “our women are losing their babies and pregnancies.

They further said that the protest was meant to draw attention to the severe hunger, lack of medical care, and inhumane treatment they have suffered  at the camp.

One of the IDPs, Rebecca Awuse told journalists that, “we have problems. Our problems are that we are hungry, we don’t have food to eat, no where to sleep.

“Our children are crying for severe hunger and many women who are pregnant have all lost their pregnancies because of hunger and no access medical treatments.

“Also, many of these pregnant women have no where to sleep, they are sleeping on bare floor and no hospital for them to attend antenatal. There are no drugs, no professionals at the camp to consult. These are some of our problems”.

Meanwhile, SEMA’s Information Officer, Tema Ager, stated that the protest was politically motivated, adding that there is no situation for now that could warrant any protest.

Ager denied the claim that pregnant women are sleeping on bare floor and no cases of pregnant women losing their babies.

“The IDPs are not being starved, government is providing food for them.  Those IDPs in Yelewata usually abandoned their camp and move to the camp in international market in Makurdi because it’s a recent camp and people have been trooping in there to provide them with food. 

“Even when we take food to them there in Yelwata, they still come back to international market to collect another one. The major issue that triggered this protest is politics. Simply because the first lady visited yesterday Benue State and announced that she donated N1 billion. 

“You know the process of getting this money, sometimes they just announce it. It’s when they go back that they process and release it as promised.

“What  the first lady, Mrs Tinubu announced yesterday cannot happened today and more also, the money is for resettlements not for food and some of them are protesting that they were given money before and we have not shared it to them”, Ager stated.

He insisted that the money is not meant to be shared for them , saying that the protest was politically motivated.

On when last  food items were distributed to IDPs in the State, Ager said IDPs were supposed to be given food last week but was overtaken by events.

“As  we speak now food is being distributed to them but they protest at the road was politically motivated. The last time food was distributed to the idps was in May this year but currently food is being distributed to the IDPs across the state”, he said.