Family Loses 23 Members Following Herdsmen Attack in Benue State

The attack began late Friday night, June 13, and continued into the early hours of Saturday,  June 14, leaving over a hundred people de@d. Some unconfirmed reports suggest around 200 people were k!lled.

Tsegba Gbam Ayua lost his wife and four children to the attack.

The grieving husband and father expressed fears that he may never recover from the trauma.

“I had been displaced from Ayua in Nasarawa State for over two years and was taking refuge with my family in Yelewata. A few days before the incident, I travelled back to Nasarawa to do menial jobs so I could support my family,” Ayua told Daily Trust in Makurdi on Sunday, June 15.

He continued, “Then, around 11 pm on Friday, I got a call that our host community was under attack. I rushed back early Saturday morning, only to find the worst nightmare of my life. My wife and four children had been burned to ashes inside the market stalls where they were sleeping. Over 100 corpses were recovered in the area.” 

He said he buried his family the same day and is now struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.

Prince Aondona Isaka Ornguga also spoke on how he lost at least 23 family members in the attack. Initially, he took to Facebook to disclose that he lost “over 15 members” of his family. He has now revealed that a total of 23 family members d!ed in the mass@cre.

Ornguga, a former Senior Special Assistant to ex-Governor Samuel Ortom on Local Government Administration, said the 23 victims were all related to him through his maternal lineage.

“I spoke with two of the victims -Victor Utim and Mathew Iormba – about three weeks ago. They are my first cousins from Tse Tarbee, my mother’s village. While Utim just wrote JAMB, and we were working on getting admission for him. Iormba told me he went to check his business around there,” he narrated.

He expressed worry that the victims were k!lled in the most inhumane manner.

“Iormba was a pharmacist. He had a tall dream, but look at how it all ended for them. And for Utim, this is not what we discussed,” Ornguga lamented.

A survivor of the attack, Mama Victoria Tyobee, said she still could not fathom how she escaped from the armed men.

She said, “We were sleeping when, about midnight, I heard a gunshot, and looking through the window, I saw one of the attackers with a weapon standing right by my house. As I was wondering what to do next, there were sporadic gunshots, and the man fled into the nearby bushes.