UN representative shocked after visiting Agatu LGA

– The United Nations representative Angele Dikongue-Atangana has said that Agatu local government area of Benue state is in total ruin

– She noted that it would be difficult for local people to rebuild their communities without external help

– Femi Adesina noted that President Muhamamdu Buhari does not have to visit victims of Agatu massacre to do his job

– According to Joseph Ngbede, the chairman of Agatu local government area, normalcy has returned to the area

Angele Dikongue Atangana described the damage in Agatu LGA as unimaginable.

Angele Dikongue-Atangana, the representative of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Refugees to Nigeria and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has said that Agatu local government area of Benue state is in total ruin and described the damage as unimaginable.

Vanguard reports that Atangana was led on the tour of the area by Ezekiel Adaji, the deputy chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Internally Displaced Persons, Refugees and North East Development Initiative.

She noted that it would be difficult for local people to rebuild their communities without external help and stressed that Agatu crisis needs national and international attention.

“In my 20 years of working as a humanitarian, I have never seen such a level of destruction. If steps are not taken, the crisis can affect the country as a whole,” she said.

According to the UN representative, the damage to Agatu was similar to what was happening in the North-East.

Visiting the Internally Displaced Persons at the Ugbokpo camp, Atangana disclosed that the UN body had donated non-food items worth over N20 million to the IDPs. She added that the items were with the State Emergency Management Agency in Makurdi.

Meanwhile, Femi Adesina, the president’s special adviser on media and publicity, has noted that Muhamamdu Buhari does not have to visit victims of herdsmen massacre in Agatu to do his job.

Speaking during a session with Osasu Igbinedion on “The Osasu Show”, Adesina reminded Nigerians that Buhari had issued a statement on Agatu killings where he said that he would ask for briefings, and it would be looked into.

“Some people kept saying Agatu, Agatu, he has not spoken, and I asked myself, what else would he say after the statement that has been issued.

“We are used to the style of the last administration in which whenever anything happens, the president would go there. But do you know that before that last president left, that style had begun to backfire.

“They had begun to say, every day he would go there, he would go here, what comes out of it?” Adesina wondered.

Speaking with journalists on Saturday, April 2, Joseph Ngbede, the chairman of Agatu local government area, claimed that normalcy had returned to the area.

“I don’t stay in Makurdi. I am in Agatu. I can say there are no more attacks and the people are returning home,” he said.

On March 30, in a press conference held at the National Assembly, the legislators stated that the situation in Benue state is a genocide by the Fulani herdsmen against their people.

They condemned the belated reaction of President Buhari and the minister of interior, Lt. Gen Abdulrahman Dambazzau (rtd), “who broke their unholy silence a week after over 500 people were killed and 10 villages razed in Agatu area of the state”.