Houses burnt as residents flee Benue communal clash

Residents on Wednesday fled Ikpayongo community of Gwer East local government area in Benue state following violent clash among the villagers as they torch several houses.

Witnesses said tension began building up between the Mbaivar and Mbasombo people of Ikpayongo few days after both communities disagreed over the location where one of their dead persons ought to be buried.

Our correspondent gathered that, for several months now, the Mbaivar referred to as settlers had been at loggerhead with the Mbasombo who are known as indigenes basically due to land dispute.

But, the underlying battle had however been managed through dialogue by the both sides until early hours of Wednesday when the villagers threw caution to the wind and began to raze down each other’s houses.

A local from the area told Daily Trust that what triggered the violence was the refusal of the indigenes to allow the settlers buried their dead in the land.

The villager said there had been an agelong agreement between the parties in dispute that settlers would carry their dead back to their ancestral homes for burial, stressing that the attempt by the settlers to bury their dead at Ikpayongo stirred up the controversy which snowballed to burning of houses even after the deceased was later taken for burial in his home town.

It was learnt that the incident caused pandemonium in the area which made many of the residents to desert their homes.

The state’s Commissioner of Police, Mukkadas Garba, who paid on the spot assessment visit to the troubled community situated about 10km from Makurdi confirmed the incident.

Garba said though no lives were lost, some thatched houses were burnt in.the process just as some houses were deserted by their occupants.

The police commissioner, who disclosed that no arrest had been made, was however meeting with elders of both warring factions of the community in his office as at the time of filing this report.