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Carl Terver Reflects On Benue, the Yelewata Killings, and the Politics Of Naming In An Earnest Op-Ed. 

     1.

These days, I hardly remember I am a poet. Only in momentary phases do I recall I am one. My thoughts constantly betray me, taking the form of essays. These phases, when I recall I am a poet, come because of the emotions of love or of war. When I speak of war, there are the wars every man faces within himself. And then there is the war Nigeria brings to your doorstep: the kind that inspires sad, grief-laden poems or such that, through the numbness of it, makes you find ways to understand what is going on in your country. It is this second war that inspired me to write, in 2019, in a poem titled “This Blood,” that “My country has an alternative Stock Exchange / that counts dead bodies, / the more the bodies / the shares bought, / that raised Patience’s Cry: / This blood we are sharing!” It was a response, months later, to the killings of 73 persons in Benue on the New Year’s Eve of 2018, whose victims were interred in a state-organised mass burial that came to be known as Black Thursday. 

    2.

In 2015, I wrote my first short story, which, after several re-titling (and editing), would become “Once Upon A Time in Jato-Aka,” now published in The Stockholm Review of Literature. It was inspired by a beautiful experience of my visit that year to Jato-Aka, a town in Kwande LGA, Benue, which borders Cameroon in the Mandara Mountain range. Jato-Aka is a small, sleepy agrarian town, and the road that leads into it suddenly stops in the town square. 

With an artistic eye, I imagined the arrival of something extraordinary to spice up the people’s lives, or the town itself, and the idea of a retired general came to mind. I drafted this into the story and painted the picture of what such slow, border towns looked like, having once lived the life of a farm boy in the countryside myself, depicting the sedentary, the communal, the calm, and the peacefulness. Then I ended the story with a cliffhanger that even I didn’t know was an apt example of the artistic unconscious at work: “Then one day, it happened again, the pestilence of locusts that struck every year, unexpectedly. In the time the old General was back, it had not happened. The Fulanis came.”

3.

For years, I was disturbed by this ending. It felt incomplete. It felt prejudiced. It felt phobic and eager to misrepresent and profile the entire Fulani ethnic group as a plague, as aggressors, when I was supposed to believe in the pluralistic multi-ethnicity of the so-called Nigerian project. Not only that, I judged that being Nigerian means living among other ethnicities and respecting them. But I was also aware of the fact that I have friends; I know and have met a good number who are as human as I am, with the daily worries of life, as feeding their children, paying school fees, and affording transportation. 

I struggled with whatever justification I could contrive to make the story work, to make it not look like, “Oh, here is a Tiv writer who has written to paint the Fulanis bad.” Eventually, I let go, refusing to be held back by what, in retrospect, I feel was simply too much correctness in the face of confronting a real problem that was not simply a short story. And I used a character in it to ask a question which remains baffling: “Why should one man have more right to kill another?” In an earlier version of the story, the question was, “Why should a group of Nigerians have more right to kill other Nigerians?” 

4.

The question now, away from fiction, but to the crisis of what is now becoming the daily barbaric killings of Nigerians—not just in Benue, but in Plateau, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Borno, and wherever pleases the homicidal urges of these terrorists—is what are these killings for? But it is another question rendered meaningless by the indifferent climate that has become Nigeria for more than a decade now. Because the government has refused to fight insecurity, creating a loophole for further insecurity, which now appears glaringly to us (not that we never suspected it) to be a deliberate ploy to cause confusion and artificial helplessness. To solve a security crisis of this nature, the state has to identify it, classify it for what it is, before setting the right apparatus to combat it. This has not been done, and in the years these killings have continued, it has been misidentified as herdsmen-farmers clashes. News outlets, without on-the-ground investigations, have peddled this narrative whenever there’s another case of killings where, often, the victims are unarmed Nigerians, sometimes killed in their beds. 

The mistake so far, I believe, was the Benue state government’s tolerance in not naming the problem until past governor Samuel Ortom’s accusations of a Fulani expansionist threat in the state, which led him in 2017 to enact an anti-open grazing legislation known as the Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law. But to some of us, even if this addressed the problem at some scale, it was merely reactionary; a band-aid to what we think is a larger conundrum. It was like sending rice—the typical Nigerian politician’s answer to a crisis. 

The attacks never stopped. Not only so, they began to assume a recognisable M.O. of displacing and occupying, as people flee and abandon their indigenous homes. Even more, there appears to be a desire to instill terror and intent to harm: on 8 April 2023, as the country waited to inaugurate Bola Tinubu as president, after what seemed to have been a sham election, Channels TV reported: “Many feared killed as suspected herdsmen attack Benue IDPs.” 

These were people who had fled homes where their farms were. What was such an attack for? What farmlands of these displaced persons were the attackers after? Or in recent Yelwata, on 14 June 2025, where a hecatomb of deaths was orchestrated in a very cold and methodical execution? The police station had been attacked first, to cripple any armed resistance, the villagers report, before a door-to-door, family-by-family execution began, going on for three unholy hours, in a community less than an hour’s drive from the state capital, Makurdi; with another attack orchestrated a few hours apart at the other exit of the capital, in Mbaivur, near the Air Force Base in Makurdi. 

Sending the herdsmen away, which Benue citizens have cried for in the past, it seems, doesn’t end the problem. And if there have been fears this is beyond conflicts about grazing, these scenarios only intensify, if not to confirm them. 

5.

The first time I drank kindirmo, fresh cow milk hawked in colourful calabashes by Fulani women, was in my secondary school, perhaps in 2003 or 2004. I remember it was after closing, and the sun was high. My female classmate who made me try it said the women had tied ice blocks in a nylon and placed them in the calabash to chill the milk. Thirst had driven me, rather than curiosity. But it tasted wonderful, so that after that day I always looked forward to it whenever I had small change to spare. 

This was deep in Ukum LGA. On the way to the farm with my grandma, or returning, we’d sometimes meet Fulanis on the road walking together in a group, men (who looked more like boys, too young), women, and children. They were nomadic Fulanis, who often, to us, appeared to come out of nowhere as they lived in very interior settlements, and sometimes went to the local markets to buy goods and trade. 

I do not recall any bad blood existing between them and us, or maybe I was too innocent to notice. They simply existed as a curious exotic to us: their slim men carrying staffs and looking like women, sometimes wearing make-up. Unimaginably, there was such understanding that they would often have an agreement with farmers to bring their cattle after a harvest to graze the pasture from stalks of maize and other harvested plants. 

I am not being romantic about such a past, nor do I wish to patronise anyone. Because once in a while, we heard of cattle destroying farms. But I can tell you that Nigeria was once like this. That Benue was once like this. There was no need for fighting because the herder Fulanis were under the protection of the communities they lived in, and mutual understanding was established. So what happened? Why did herdsmen start using machetes on people? And when did guns come? Why are so-called herdsmen, who do not have cattle—because you need a herd of livestock to be a herdsman—but instead ride on motorcycles, invading and attacking villages with assault rifles? 

It is not just Benue under attack by such barbarians, but Nigeria. It is not just about usurping authority anywhere they can, stoking tensions, or causing confusion and political instability. It is the fact that children are burned alive by criminals who will never meet justice, or worse, who know no one is going after them, and that they will emerge again to continue their terror. And that we are caught in a trap where the Nigerian government, with the strongest military force in West Africa, pretends to be helpless. 

6.

What we are dealing with, not only in Benue, but nationwide, is a successful plan of confusion sown by a group with their plans. Surely, these killers take orders from someone. Possessing arms is strictly regulated in Nigeria, but these killers have no problem accessing not mere guns but assault rifles. In Yelwata, the killings were executed like an operation. Two days after this attack, a list of the families killed was published in Daily Post (courtesy of a Franc Utoo, a lawyer and native of Yelewata “who lost over 33 members of his extended family”). There were the Adam family, Ajah family, Akpen family, Amaki family, Anya family, Aondona family, Aondovihi family, Asom family, and so on, numbering up to 47 families, like a roster. What is to say that one day it won’t become more targeted, as genocidal killings are often planned to take out specific persons? 

Finally, perhaps, the misinformation about this simply being herdsmen attacks or internal clashes, as the news ignorantly reports, is now evident. And this was why the Tor Tiv, Professor James Ayatse, the number one Tiv citizen and perhaps an authority on Tiv matters, at the president’s visit to Benue state on June 18, unequivocally stated, that: 

“We do have grave concerns about the misinformation and misrepresentation of the security crisis in Benue State. It’s not herders-farmers clashes. It’s not communal clashes. It’s not reprisal attacks or skirmishes. It is this misinformation that has led to suggestions such as ‘remain tolerant, negotiate for peace, learn to live with your neighbours’. What we are dealing with in Benue is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits, which has been going on for decades and is worsening every year. Wrong diagnosis will always lead to wrong treatment. So, we are dealing with something far more sinister than we think about. It’s not learning to live with your neighbours; it is dealing with war.”

For many who do not know, historically, this is not the first time foreigners (whom the Tivs call “Uke”) have attempted to suppress the Tiv people, such that there’s even a song about this. The “Myam ciem er uke hide” song, translated as “I had a nightmare that the foreigner has returned.” Centuries later, the song remains true. The history of the Benue Valley during the 1700s through the 1800s is mired in conflicts over land among the different groups that had migrated and come to settle in the region. But the Tiv ancestors fought with their lives to defend the home they’d made for themselves in this valley. 

It was because of this consciousness to defend themselves that subjugation by the British colonial forces in the early 1900s didn’t happen so easily for the latter. It is on record that the Tivs were the last ethnic nation in colonial Nigeria to be penetrated by the British, who afterwards ignorantly tried to govern them indirectly through proxies under their colonial government—a situation that was exploited by the Caliphate in northern Nigeria at the time to exert dominance southwards. 

It is a known history that has been amply written about, with one of the more insightful works being Moses E. Ochonu’s ‘Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria.’ There were pushbacks and unrelenting resistance, of course, by the Tiv nation. It is the history of this conflict that eventually led to the creation of Benue State. I am not a historian; I have only brought this up because history is all too familiar whenever it rears its head again. Many theories, histories, or causes of the terrorism going on in Benue will be spread. And sadly, the truth is we can’t say what it is; we are not security experts and have no concrete intel, so we talk about what we see: that we are being attacked by terrorists who come for our heads, and our land. And whoever they are, they are enemies of Nigeria. 

When the musician 2Baba Idibia made a video responding to the Yelwata killings, his words were “I don’t even know what to say.” Truly, there aren’t any words for such madness other than Yelwata was indeed one of the darkest days for many of us. But for how long must this go on? 

Scroll through a certain enclave of Nigerian TikTok colloquially dubbed ‘TrenchTok,’ and you’ll find a concentrated display of unvarnished creativity. In recent years, TrenchTok has become a digital hub for some of the nation’s most audacious young talents, many of whom are dancers central to turning what was once a loose underground experiment into one of the most recognisable new movements in Nigerian pop culture: Mara. 

This is not the first time dance has worked as a pertinent vehicle in the evolution of Nigerian popular music. Dance has always anticipated and amplified major shifts throughout the history of modern Afropop. Every major change in Nigerian popular music has often come with, and been driven by, a distinct dance style. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ajegunle, a residential district on the mainland of Lagos, produced Galala, a low-swinging, leg-shuffling dance that moved in sync with the bounce of ragga-inflected songs introduced by Ajegunle-based artists like Daddy Showkey, African China, and Baba Fryo. Later, it morphed into Swo, which was followed by Alanta, with its somewhat comical series of gestures: exaggerated arm flaps, a contorted face, and a leg aloft. Then came the nationwide craze of Yahooze, fueled by Olu Maintain’s hit of the same name, which reflected the controversial lifestyle associated with the rise of internet fraud, commonly known as “Yahoo Yahoo.”

The 2010s were years defined by the formalization of Afropop. As the decade went on, the Efik-based Etighi rose to fame with Iyanya’s seminal hit “Kukere,” its hip-swaying movements inextricably linked with the song’s success. Concurrently, Azonto, despite its Ghanaian origin, found an immense Nigerian foothold. From its stylistic wellspring, P-Square’s Alingo materialized, with Davido’s Skelewu closely in its wake. 

This period also saw the rise of indigenous rap and a new wave of Street-Pop, bringing with it a fresh arsenal of moves. The Lil Kesh-popularized Shoki was a playful, shoulder-based dance with a quirky lean, adaptable, and widely embraced. By the late 2010s, the landscape shifted with the emergence of legwork, a broad category of rapid foot movements that became synonymous with Street-Pop. Mr Real’s “Legbegbe” initiated Shaku Shaku, a dance that involved a shuffling, almost drunken-like movement of the feet and hands. Zlatan Ibile then introduced Zanku, a more aggressive and athletic form of legwork that required high leg lifts and stomps that, ultimately, became his signature. Currently, it’s Mara‘s turn. As an Afrobeats subgenre, Mara draws its sonic elements from House music and EDM, but is rooted in the sound palette of Lagos’ Street-Pop scene. The music is often characterized by dense, polyrhythmic percussion and kicks that typically range between 140-160 BPM. Unlike the slick production of mainstream Afropop, Mara is intentionally abrasive, built on a foundation of raw, frequently distorted drum samples, vocal chops, and unexpected sound effects. 

Long before Street-Pop found a foothold on TikTok, DJs were laying its foundation in clubs, neighbourhood parties, and on platforms like Audiomack and SoundCloud. Similarly,  Mara figures like DJ Cora, DJ Khalipha—whose “Mara Pass Mara” is a standard-bearer—and the ubiquitous DJ YK Mule have been key to building the sound from the ground up. 

As DJ Khalipha described to The NATIVE, an authentic Mara track “blends percussive Afrobeats rhythms with atmospheric synths, deep basslines, and often a dark or moody undertone.” Continuing, he says, “It’s designed to hit you in the chest and pull you into a trance-like groove. The feeling it gives is what defines it: emotional and intense.” You hear this on some popular Mara cuts like DJ YK Mule’s “Northerners Mara,” Rema’s “Ozeba,” and Seyi Vibez’s “Shaolin.”

In many cases, dancers are the first to engage with a new mix. They interpret the beats through choreography, upload their routines, and in doing so, set a track in motion across the digital space. When a song hits, it rarely does so in isolation. It rises through TikTok videos, club appearances, and bootleg uploads, with DJs continually tweaking their mixes to respond to audience reactions.

The dance that is built around Mara is equally intense. The movements are a clear evolution of legwork, but are noticeably different from earlier forms. While Zanku focuses on quick footwork, Mara is a different beast altogether. It pushes the tempo and complexity, demanding a new level of physical dexterity, stamina, coordination, and creative interpretation. This involves full-body contortions, acrobatic leaps, sudden drops to the floor, and a disorienting, almost convulsive, attack that seems to defy anatomical limitations. The legwork, in particular, is executed at an astonishing pace, a blur of quick-fire steps and powerful kicks that sometimes send clouds of dust billowing around their feet; this stirred-up dust is part of the appeal. There’s an impressive, almost daredevil quality to it. 

One of the fascinating aspects of Mara dance is its syncretism. Dancers borrow from everywhere, extending beyond regular African dance forms to subsume elements from Hip-Hop and even martial arts. Some dancers, like the aptly named Kung Fu Master, explicitly draw on Shaolin imagery and kung fu cinema, incorporating a flurry of feints, strikes, kicks, and gravity-defying postures that resemble fight choreography.  “When the beat hits, my body just takes over and does things that sometimes even surprise me,” Kung Fu Master tells The NATIVE.  

The movements are thrillingly untamed, an explosive outpouring of energy that is spontaneous and incredibly skilled, born from an almost compulsive need to innovate. “Mara dance is created from a bunch of freestyles,” says dancer and choreographer AfroFeet. “Most times we just want to try to do something no one has seen or done before.” Teee Dollar, one of the scene’s charismatic choreographers who doubles as an artist, explains it more viscerally: “Creating steps is through vibes and ginger. Inspiration comes from anywhere — the street, Fuji, Naija classics, anywhere. Most of the time, I feel the beat and enter freestyle mode. I move according to what the rhythm shows me. Then I refine it, package it, and, gbam, it’s ready.”

This relentless pursuit of the unprecedented is the core of Mara’s visual identity. Dancers often inject comedic timing, creating a sense of lightheartedness even as they execute mind-boggling feats. It’s not uncommon to see backflips, handsprings, and other gymnastic feats all performed with a captivating looseness, their faces often etched with a mixture of intense concentration and ecstasy. Sometimes they engage in friendly battles, constantly one-upping each other with new steps, twists, and contortions.

Much of Mara’s ascent is owed to TikTok. Since the platform arrived internationally in 2017, its algorithm, which favors discoverability and rewards engaging, short-form content, has proved to be the perfect incubator for dance trends. The Mara dances are not specially designed to be widely replicable in the way TikTok dance trends often are. They are performances: rip-roaring, competitive, meant to impress. And the dancers, many of whom operate without formal training or institutional support, use the app to test out sequences, showcase routines, and build virality, sometimes before a song has even dropped. The late Odogwu Mara was one of the early dancers to popularise this on TikTok. His videos were filled with joy, technical prowess, and an unmistakable hunger to break new ground. 

The impact of this digital ecosystem is profound. For many of these dancers, TikTok serves as a studio, stage, archive, and primary promotional tool. The platform itself may not directly monetize their output and creativity, but it provides considerable visibility. Teee Dollar’s career took off after he started sharing dance videos on TikTok in 2018, which led to significant street recognition and subsequent collaborations with major industry figures like Davido, Olamide, and Seyi Vibez. According to AfroFeet, TikTok has helped to push dancers into believing they can be whoever they want to be. He affirms that, beyond being perceived as vanity metrics, the likes, comments, and shares are a form of direct audience feedback that is very encouraging. This exposure allows talent from the “trenches” to gain a significant following, a path Poco Lee had earlier exemplified through platforms like Instagram, paving the way for dance to be seen as a viable route to fame and influence. 

Even DJ Khalipha attests to the positive utility of TikTok. “TikTok helps me test new beats, gauge audience reactions in real time, and spark dance trends that bring the music to life,” he explains.  “It’s also created a direct feedback loop between me and my community.” Viral fame, even in its often ephemeral TikTok iteration, can translate into brand partnerships with local businesses, mobile phone companies, or beverage brands. There are also performance opportunities at smaller club nights or even, occasionally, as backup for more established artists, and a level of influence that was previously the preserve of those with significant industry backing or connections. 

Moreover, the digital amplification of Mara is translating into tangible real-world influence and commercial viability. The subgenre is expanding beyond its niche origins, infiltrating pop culture and fueling Nigeria’s emerging rave scene. Its imprint is visible on mainstream efforts like Rema’s Grammy-nominated ‘HEIS’ and even in the genre-hopping styles of alté staples like Cruel Santino on the S-Smart-assisted “FTR” and Brazy on “Daddy.” 

At street level, it’s propelling a new wave of hyperlocal Street-Pop, giving the sound both edge and elasticity. Mara is still evolving, its direction and how far it can reach is already being shaped by these talents who have built an informal but powerful engine around it. “Mara is a sound from the trenches, from the gutter, but I see it as the new face of Street-Pop,” Teee Dollar asserts. This ambition also comes with a sense of duty. As an artist, he’s clear-eyed about what’s at stake: “The mission is to take Mara worldwide without losing what makes it real,” he says. “It is the food for the streets. It got me to where I am, and it’s my responsibility to take it further.”

Africa’s creative and digital economy is growing rapidly. With over 570 million internet users across the continent and social media penetration increasing by the year, opportunities for content-led careers have never been greater. Popular content creator and skitmaker, Gilmore, knows about the opportunities that abound on the internet after rising to fame thanks to his comedic skits that reflect the lived experience of millions of Nigerians. 

Since he rose to fame during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gilmore has risen to fame with over 100,000 YouTube subscribers and millions of views. Still, in many ways, his success story is an outlier with many talented African content creators lacking access to the structure, resources, and training needed to scale their influence globally. To solve those issues, Gilmore has launched VELUM Studio, an innovative content creation studio built to empower Africa’s emerging talent. Founded by the viral sensation in conjunction with music label executives Godfrey and Giovanni, VELUM Studios is designed to redefine the creative journey for digital creators, bridging the gap between local creativity and global recognition.

“Our goal is simple,” Gilmore says, “to show creators you don’t need limitless resources to succeed. You need an idea, the courage to execute it, and the right support system. At VELUM Studios, we provide exactly that.”

Over the next year, the studio plans to sign and develop up to 100 emerging digital storytellers, drive hundreds of millions of views across digital platforms, and position its talent to access international grants and funding opportunities. To achieve these goals, VELUM Studios is building an in-house team of seasoned media professionals—including videographers, photographers, publicists, and marketing strategists—who will play a direct role in amplifying the work of selected creators.

In many ways, VELUM Studios is the first initiative of its kind on the continent—built to not only spotlight emerging talent but also structure their growth within the global digital economy.

For further details and information, visit the website.