Benue PDP and Plateau Governor Caleb Mutfwang both reject the term "farmer-herder clashes," with Mutfwang calling the attacks "an invasion" that threatens national sovereignty and displaces entire communities.
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Makurdi/Jos — September 1, 2026
The Benue State PDP and Plateau Governor Caleb Mutfwang have both pushed back against describing the violence ravaging their states as "farmer-herder clashes," arguing the term fundamentally misrepresents what communities are experiencing.
Speaking at the North Central Regional Security Summit in Makurdi, Governor Mutfwang said the scale of insecurity required states to abandon isolated responses in favour of a coordinated, intelligence-driven regional strategy.
He argued that calling the violence mere clashes fails to capture the nature of attacks recorded across several communities, describing them instead as an invasion, one that constitutes a threat to national sovereignty, particularly where residents have been deliberately displaced from ancestral homes.
Mutfwang said armed attackers have exploited routes linking parts of the North West with Taraba and Nasarawa states to enter Plateau, citing porous, difficult-to-monitor borders.
He called for stronger intelligence gathering, inter-state cooperation, and coordinated operations to identify and disrupt these corridors, and urged security agencies to move beyond reactionary responses to actively trace attackers to their points of origin.
Leaders must confront insecurity with honesty and a sense of urgency because of its effects on poverty, economic deprivation and development, he said.
The Benue PDP has separately argued the "clashes" framing does not fully reflect the experiences of affected communities, a position that echoes previous statements from Governor Alia, the Tor Tiv, and various Plateau civil society groups, all of whom have rejected the "farmer-herder" characterization as one that obscures what they describe as organised, targeted attacks rather than spontaneous communal disputes.
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