By Sar Terver
The September 19, 2025 operation by police and local forces at Agu Centre in Katsina-Ala, Benue State, is now being remembered for two things: the courage of officers who held ground under ambush, and the glaring questions it raises about Nigeria’s counter-terrorism approach in the Middle Belt.
What greater tragedy is there than a heroic sacrifice met with structural inadequacy? Yet it is precisely in those gaps—of strategy, technology, accountability and political posture—that the crisis festers.
The bandit-herder violence that plagues Benue and its neighbors is not a series of random raids; it is part of a regional spiral of rural insecurity that has deepened across North-Central Nigeria.
An ISS piece published in June 2025 warns that the violence in this zone reveals a systemic state failure: rural communities remain the soft targets, while most media and political attention foreground other crises.
In Benue, premium investigations have documented how local militias (or loosely aligned herdsmen militias) exacerbate violence, terrorizing farms and disrupting livelihoods.
A recent scientific study reinforces the gravity: insecurity in Benue significantly reduces agricultural output. The authors found that a marginal rise in attacks depresses both crop and livestock production.
That data points to something we may intuitively know: the war is not just about bodies being lost, but about food, markets, and communities being hollowed out.
Thus, when police officers rode into Agu Centre expecting to dislodge a bandit encampment, they were entering a contested terrain, not just of arms, but of accumulation, networks, and survival strategies.
According to our sources, the attackers had fortified their position with cross-border recruits from Taraba, armed with AK-47s, submachine guns and RPGs. The ambush was merciless. The defenders held as long as ammunition and nerve lasted.
Among them was ASP Danlamin Usman (“Dan Zuru”), who, a police officer who preferred anonymity said, delayed his retreat to cover his men’s withdrawal until his own position was overwhelmed.
In conversation with security analysts, a recurring criticism emerges: the operation was tactically flawed. “Motorcycles and pickup trucks into dense territory, with no air cover or reconnaissance? That is inviting disaster,” said a retired military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Another, security analyst Alphonsus Ukoh, pointed out that surveillance drones had been procured by some state agencies but were not deployed ahead of the offensive. The intelligence needed to detect the ambush was available, if command had chosen to use it.
If one were to design a more modern, defensive posture, the blueprint would stress intelligence, air assets, drone surveillance, and layered defenses. The tragedy at Agu Centre suggests those layers are still ad hoc and unevenly deployed.
Yet perhaps the most politically contentious thread in this story lies in the aftermath of a remark made by President Bola Tinubu during his June 2025 visit to Benue. In a town hall meeting, the President was reported to have counseled that local actors should “go and settle with them”, a phrase many interpreted as urging negotiation or appeasement with armed actors.
Traditional authorities got tensed. The Tor Tiv (HRM Prof. James Ayatse) responded swiftly, urging proscription of Fulani armed herders as terrorists and foreigners.
He later warned that framing the conflict as a neighborly or communal dispute would misdiagnose it; this is war, he said, “not a herder-farmer quarrel.”
That tension, between militarized resistance and negotiated accommodation, runs through much of the security discourse in the state. To some, like a former security aide to ex-governor Ortom of Benue State, “settle with them” smacks of weakness or capitulation.
To others, it suggests a political candidness about the limits of force. But in a region long battered by waves of violence, the language of appeasement can easily resolve into the language of resignation.
Voices closer to the ground bear the emotional weight of this abstraction. In interviews with widows of slain police officers in Benue, one recurring lament is that their husbands died fighting in the shadows, without backup, without support, and without a public reckoning beyond eulogies.
A relative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said of the Agu operation: “They sent him in front. They did not send drones. They did not send artillery. They asked him to settle with a gunman? No. Even when he ran out of bullets and noticed that the attackers had far outnumbered him, he put a phone call for a helicopter to be sent to rescue them—nobody answered him.”
Within the Benue State House of Assembly, some legislators privately admit frustration with the limited oversight and funding for internal security operations.
Still other queries remain unresolved. Did the Agu Centre attackers act independently, or as part of a broader network? Did they infiltrate local support networks? Were there prior warnings? Why was there no air or armored coverage? What rules of engagement guided police and local forces? And how many lives could have been spared had drones or aerial reconnaissance been used?
These are not academic questions; they bear directly on the future of counter-terrorism strategy in Nigeria’s heartland. The men and women who fight on these fronts demand not only recognition, but reformed strategy that matches their valor.
Asked specifically why the government is not deploying drones to crush the deadly militia, a security aide to Governor Hyacinth Alia declined comment, saying security strategies cannot be disclosed to the public.
However, a retired army officer from Kwara State, Col. (rtd) Adebayo Ajibola, whose state also suffers frequent bandit incursions, argued that the use of drones would have been the most effective option in such combat.
“You can’t keep sending men on ground patrols against terrorists who already lie in wait inside thick forests. They see you long before you see them. The smarter way is to use drones,” Ajibola asserted.
His words echoed the grief of the widows in Benue, indicating that the failure to embrace technology does not just waste resources, it wastes lives.
Heroism without design leads to repeated tragedy. If the sacrifice at Agu Centre is to mean anything, Nigeria must match resolve with intelligence, armor, surveillance, and the courage to call terror by its name, not to settle with it.
