Benue State Government has dismissed talk about its planned rehabilitation centre as “mischievous misrepresentations,” insisting the facility is meant for victims who were forced into criminal gangs—not for hardened terrorists.
Josephine Habba, Director-General of the Benue State Peace and Reconciliation Commission, clarified this on Monday while reacting to public debate over the proposed Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) centre. She said the project has to be seen against the backdrop of Benue’s long-running insecurity.
“Benue became almost a theatre of conflict, and we needed to stop it fast,” Habba said. She noted that while the herder-farmer crisis grabs headlines, it doesn’t capture the full picture of the state’s security problems.
“There’s confusion around conflict in Benue State. When you mention conflict, the big elephant people think about is the herder-and-farmer clash. But that doesn’t address the root causes of insecurity here.”
She singled out the Sankera axis—Katsina-Ala, Ukum and Logo local-government areas—where armed banditry has taken hold.
“We all know the story of Sankera. The fights there aren’t just about farmers and herders. These are our own children, young people dragged or forced into banditry.”
Habba recalled that in early 2024 Governor Hyacinth Alia visited Katsina-Ala after the Catholic Diocese presented alarming reports. “At that meeting we learned that many of our children were snatched from markets, homes, even while riding motorcycles, and taken into the creeks to work for criminal gangs.”
According to her, the abductees “were used as foot soldiers or ordered to carry out risky jobs for kingpins hiding in the forests. Sometimes women, including pregnant women, were taken to cook or run errands.”
After assessments by the commission and partners, more than 1 800 people were profiled as having been forced into bandit networks.
“These were the people presented to the governor. They’re not the state’s entire criminal population, just individuals whose situations need careful handling.”
Governor Alia, she said, opted for a “carrot approach”: if these people are genuinely remorseful and weren’t criminals before being hauled into the bush, he would consider amnesty. A committee was then set up to run discreet background checks.
