Aside Benue, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must fix his eyes on Nasarawa state. There is a tinderbox delicately tilting here. And it must not trip over. It’s the suppressed plaintive cries of the Tiv in Nasarawa. A minority within a minority. They are oppressed, almost facing eclipse. Oppressed by those who should protect them.
Governor Abdullahi Sule, using apparatchik of state in unholy alliance with some local chiefs, is the suspected incubus haunting and hounding the spirits of the Tiv ancestors to the discomfort of the living Tiv in the state. The Tiv in Nasarawa say the state government has forcefully annexed their ancestral land. In neighbouring Benue state, the Tiv are a defined majority. But not so in Nasarawa. Here, they are a dot on the precipice of a circle. A tiny but highly resourceful group. And because they are few, they have no representation in the State Assembly, House of Representatives and the Senate. They do not count in the state Government House.
Sequestered in the southern axis of the state, especially in Doma, Nasarawa, Lafia, Obi, Keana, and Awe local government areas, they are currently caught in a silent war of attrition with the state government whom they accused of attempting to take their ancestral land. Tiv in Nasarawa, just like their brothers and sisters in Benue are largely agrarian. Their land is their only enduring asset, their possession from ages past. Effectively schemed out from public appointments in the state and in the larger Nigerian canvas, they have resolved to hold on to and maximally utilise the only valuable resource that providence bestowed on them: their land. They farm on the land, contributing handsomely to the nation’s food security equation. Unfortunately, their land is being annexed by the state authority. And they wonder why it has to be their land that would catch the fancy of the state government when far bigger land exists elsewhere among the majorities in the state.
They have protested, cried to the media, went to court and lobbied authorities to no avail. The more they do, the more the land-grabbers claw deeper into their ancestral land in what the Tiv leaders described as a deliberate and calculated attempt to dispossess them of their God-given resource. And it’s truly their land from centuries past. All the annexures, historical maps and ancestral landmarks suggest, most evidently, that the Tiv own the land in question.
This time, they have taken their case to President Tinubu. In a letter to the President dated 28 May, 2025 under the aegis of Tiv Development Association (TIDA), Nasarawa State, and signed by Professor Emmanuel Iornumbe Kucha, Acting President of TIDA and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Agriculture (now Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi), the Tiv indigenes in Nasarawa accused the state governor, Abdullahi Sule, and some non-Tiv traditional rulers, particularly the Osoho of Agwatashi of annexing ancestral land of the Tiv indigenes in the state.
In the letter to the President titled: Recurrent, Consistent, Brutal And Systemic Genocide And Ethnic Cleansing Against The Tiv Indigenes Of Nasarawa State With The Aim To Weaken And De-Populate: A Passionate Call For Your Urgent Intervention; TIDA pleaded with the President to intervene as the “Government of Nasarawa State led by His Excellency, Engr. A. A. Sule has not only failed to protect us but is taking active steps to depopulate and completely make Tiv indigenes of Nasarawa State extinct by taking over our lands where we have lived for over four (4) centuries which is our ONLY source of livelihood.
“ Should that be allowed to happen, it will be a complete act of genocide as our people who are predominantly farmers and live in the villages would certainly die of starvation and depression (a repeat of the 2000 – 2001 episode where more than 500 Tiv indigenes were killed) as they have no other source of livelihood in Nasarawa State outside farming,” the letter stated.
TIDA wants President Tinubu to, among other demands, halt the forceful acquisition of the said ancestral land; institute a probe into the matter, restore forthwith all the statutory heads of Tiv communities, and that Tiv farmers in Nasarawa state should be “jealously protected and encouraged for massive agricultural activities in order to contribute their quota in feeding the nation as they have always been doing.”
They insist that all the physical features, facts on the ground and documentary evidence from British colonial government up to date, suggest evidentially that the Tiv have been dwelling in these hotly contended areas long before the amalgamation of Nigeria.
TIDA backed their letter with a Certified True Copy of the Memorandum of the District officer to the Divisional officer, Lafia province dated 6th April, 1933 and 5th July 1933 obtained from the National archives which indicates that the Tiv indigenes of Nasarawa State have been in occupation of the area now known as Awe, Obi, Keana, Doma and Lafia Local Government Areas of Nasarawa State since 1830.
And they wonder why those who merely arrived at the area in the 1980s are the ones claiming ownership of the land the Tiv have been farming and living in since about 1830, almost two centuries ago.
The recent visit of President Tinubu to Benue state was timely and commendable. Even more worthy of laudation was the fact that he went there with the nation’s security chiefs. Tinubu did not hide his disappointment at the intelligence gaps that has resulted in no arrests made in the midst of the Benue carnage. In his traditional carrot and stick approach, Tinubu commended the security chiefs but demanded more from them.
After Benue, President Tinubu would need to urgently attend to the cries of Tiv in Nasarawa. The President should be guided by the words of the Tor Tiv V, His Royal Majesty James Ayatse, who described what happened (as is still happening) in Benue as a “genocide, not a dispute.” The President must as a duty and responsibility of his office, address the plight of Tiv in Nasarawa just so that what is currently a silent scheme of attrition does not implode into another genocide of monstrous proportion.
