Long before the herdsmen violence Benue State had been suffering an extreme "violence" of a different kind; Vicious poverty.
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#Benue State, presently in the throes of the worst violent onslaught on its peoples, has been long caught up in another extreme “violence”, that of a deadly vicious cycle of poverty.Benue economy is mostly agrarian.
However the state government, which is the main provider of capital, has ceased to be supportive. In the past 6 years, salaries have been so irregular that most workers only see them as a sort of back up rather than their main source of income.
Most families get by through farming. Even though this is the case, majority of the farmers in Benue State are smallholder farmers who have no access to modern farming techniques.
The presence of the University of Agriculture Makurdi, a federal institution, in its 3 decades of existence has miraculously not changed this notorious state of affairs! So farmers have no access to expertise and funds.
This means the farms’ yield per hectare is very poor and even when they manage a good yield they can hardly make anything from sales due to a lack of infrastructure like none existent feeder roads,
which in turn leaves them at the mercy of rapacious middle men who make a killing buying off the produce on the cheap, short changing the farmers.
So the circle of poverty continues with nothing done by the avarice inspired governments.
So the circle of poverty continues with nothing done by the avarice inspired governments.
It is in this nightmarish state of mere existence that further misery is heaped on the hapless Benue people in the form of the murderous attacks by the… (Fulani Herdsmen, ISWA, Libyan hit men, etc, you choose the one you best believe).
If the malfeasance in the Benue State government is not resisted and if the people do not resort to self defence in the face of the genocidal attacks by whoever (as the federal government helplessly looks on), one thing is certain,
a whole generation of Benue people will be wiped off the face of the earth, either by violence or grinding poverty or both.
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