Cephas Iorhemen 
The Middle Belt Forum (MBF), yesterday, broke its silence on the intractable killings of unarmed people of Benue State as it backed the earlier call by former Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Gen Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, urging Nigerians to resort to self-defence to curb ongoing massacre of the people.
Besides, the forum admonished President Bola Tinubu to, as a matter of urgency, overhaul the nation’s security architecture, and inject fresh blood into the system as well as establish the state police to help curb the worsening insecurity situation ravaging the state and county in general.
National President of the Forum, Dr Bitrus Pogu, disclosed this in an exclusive telephone interview with New Telegraph in Makurdi.
Pogu maintained that the only panacea to tackle the bloodshed in the region, particularly the disturbing killings in Benue State, was for the people to resort to the initial position of Gen Danjuma who propounded selfdefence as the only way out.
The MBF leader urged the people to adopt the use of bows and arrows to confront their enemies since they cannot afford to have guns the terrorists acquired, stressing that where the people lack capacity, drones and binoculars can be used to help watch from a distance, the location of the insurgents for necessary action.
His words: “The way out is what TY Danjuma said, we should prepare and defend ourselves. That’s the way out of the killings in the region.
“You know, you cry to the government, the government will not do anything, lots of security men have compromised and our brothers in the North are so organised and they have resources to even buy our people to fight ourselves.
“Most of the killings in Benue are not done by outsiders; some of them (the terrorists) pay our Benue people to kill each other; that is the unfortunate thing about the situation.
“Thank God, a typical Tiv man has a mud house; that mud house resists bullets.
If the man doesn’t meet you in the field, he meets you in the mud house, when you are in the house you have a fortified room.
Get your bow and arrow because you don’t have money for a gun.
“If you look at it very well, many of the people killed by the herdsmen are macheted, they don’t even use bullets.
You come with your machete before they enter, get a poisoned arrow, that’s it! Let’s carry that message across.
Whether they use some of our criminal brothers on drugs or they come themselves; if we are armed ourselves, we can defend ourselves.
“So we should stop lamenting and defend ourselves, because nobody out there will defend us.
Where we lack capacity, we can provide some certain things like what do we do about people coming in?
Like drones to help us see who is coming in or let’s have binoculars to be able to watch the attackers from a distance.”
Pogu regretted that the Federal Government has not done enough to mitigate the attacks, stressing that if state police were put in place to help address the incessant attacks and killings, the situation would not have degenerated to the level it is at the moment.
“We tried to ensure that we have community policing, but the National Assembly has not done anything up till now.
If we have community policing, local government police, state police, you think Benue people will allow people from outside to come and kill their people?”
Pogu stressed the need for the Federal Government to overhaul the entire national security architecture to inject fresh blood into the system, “which didn’t exist before and which should exist now, just like saying we need state police.”
He stressed the need for the Federal Government to begin posting people, especially security personnel, to their ancestral homes.
He explained: “If you are a policeman from Benue State, you should be sent to Benue State to see whether you will allow people from outside to come and kill your people.
“Soldiers should also be sent to their communities, they would defend their communities to death because they know it’s their people who are being attacked. This should be started immediately to address the situation.
But you come and send somebody who is sympathetic to these people (terrorists) as a Commanding Officer in a place; he will continue to protect his people who are attacking and killing innocent people,” Pogu noted.
