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Human rights activist Ukan Kurugh has fired a direct missile at the Benue State Government, demanding immediate action against members of the state-owned community security outfit, Anyam Nyor, especially those operating at local government level.
In a strongly worded public statement that has already gone viral, Kurugh accused elements within the outfit of illegal arrests, indefinite detention without trial, physical torture, harassment, and outright extortion of innocent citizens under flimsy or fabricated excuses.
According to him, Anyam Nyor operatives have quietly morphed into a parallel police force that now acts as prosecutor, judge, and jailer all at once, a situation he describes as “alarming and unacceptable.”
Kurugh’s most explosive claim: in some local government areas, the outfit has become a terror tool in the hands of political thugs and overzealous chairmen, picking up youths at night, beating them until they part with money or land documents, and dumping them days later with no record and no explanation.
He has therefore called on the Office of the Security Adviser to the Governor to launch an immediate, no-nonsense investigation, sanitize the outfit, and restore discipline before the monster the government created turns fully against the same people it was meant to protect.
Anyam Nyor was established by the previous administration and retained (and rebranded) by Governor Alia to support conventional security agencies in the fight against herdsmen attacks and rural banditry. When it works well, it works very well; local vigilantes who know every footpath and speak the language have helped repel several attacks and recover rustled cattle.
But power, as always, corrupts fast at the grassroots. Uniform plus gun plus impunity equals disaster, and that is exactly what many communities are now whispering about.
Kurugh’s statement is the loudest public indictment yet, coming from a respected voice that has spent years defending victims of both herdsmen bullets and state high-handedness.
Government House is yet to respond officially, but sources close to the security council say the matter is already causing serious discomfort at the highest levels.
One thing is clear: if these allegations are even half true, Anyam Nyor is dangerously close to becoming the very monster it was created to fight.
The governor promised a state where no one lives in fear, neither of herdsmen nor of the people sent to protect them from herdsmen.
Time to keep that promise, before the next video of a bloodied youth dumped by the roadside comes with an Anyam Nyor tag.
