For several months, the militants had monitored the movements of the soldiers in Bonta before finally reaching an agreement to kill them, witnesses said.
On April 5, 2021, a group of local militants in Bonta, a town in the Konshinsha Local Government Area of Nigeria's northwestern Benue State, waylaid and killed some soldiers coming from Okpute, a neighbouring community in the Oju Local Government Area of the state. This was in the heat of the tensions and tit-for-tat killings between the native Tiv and Igede, who, respectively, populate Bonta and Okpute.
For months, the Tiv militants, otherwise called Bonta Boys, had nursed the suspicion that the soldiers were aiding the Okpute side This led to the ambush and murder of 12 army personnel.
The conflict between the two groups has a long history with roots in land boundary disputes, a common cause of clashes between Nigerian ethnic groups, especially in rural areas where farmers increasingly need land for cultivation amid rising population growth.
"The soldiers claimed they came for peace but they were only fuelling the war," said Gungul Samuel, a local familiar with the activities of the militants. "So, they decided to corner them (the soldiers) that day but they ended up killing them."
When the news of the slaying of the soldiers broke last year, details of how it happened barely emerged. One year after, PREMIUM TIMES interviewed several locals, eyewitnesses, and militants participating in the armed conflict.
Bonta Boys: 'How we killed the intruding soldiers'
The Nigerian Army lost a total of 12 personnel, including a captain, a warrant officer, two sergeants, three corporals, one lance corporal and four privates, to the attack by the Bonta Boys.
One local leader, Emmanuel Jembe, said he is the secretary to a group of Bonta elders contributing funds to procure arms for the militants. Clad in an ocean-blue native attire, he sat in front of his house in Bonta recalling how the soldiers were trapped in a war they were sent to end.
Several locals, who corroborated Mr Jembe's claims, alleged that an Igede elite, John Odeh, a retired brigadier-general from Oju, influenced the role of the soldiers to serve his native Igede fighters. The locals accused Mr Odeh of shielding the Igede fighters and supplying arms to them using his experience as an ex-military officer. Although commonly held among the Tiv, PREMIUM TIMES could not independently verify this allegation and we could not reach Mr Odeh for comment.
"He sent some soldiers -- about six of them -- to guard his own house in Okpute," Mr Jembe said. "So, the soldiers were always joining the Igede boys to attack us."
In the middle of the violent conflict in March 2021, Mr Odeh had allegedly sent some bullets, using an army Hilux vehicle, locals said. Bonta residents we interviewed believed they were attacked with the ammunition the soldiers supplied to the Igede militants in Oju.
"Although they succeeded in burning some of our houses, we brought down some of the men," one of the militants, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told PREMIUM TIMES. "You know they have the ammunition but they don't know how to aim and shoot. Otherwise, it would have been very deadly for us."
Two weeks later, the militants said they got a tip-off that their Igede neighbours were expecting some supply of bullets and guns from the soldiers as usual. They mounted a roadblock in Bonta just as the Igede militants had done in Okpute.
"The following morning we saw two Hilux vans coming from Okpute in our direction. When they came to Bonta here there was a roadblock. So we asked them where they were going and they said they were on a military patrol," Mr Jembe said, noting that several authorities they contacted over the matter denied knowing about the military operation in the area.
"The soldiers you heard were killed were actually sent to Taraba State. But the brigadier-general made an arrangement with them and diverted two machine guns, 12 AK-47s with 8 cartons of bullets and some Lacacera bottles with bullets," Mr Jembe claimed.
"Now, because the soldiers who came from Taraba didn't know the route, they came down here and we stopped them. After some interviews, we knew that the same thing that used to happen was going to repeat itself," he added.
Armed with charms, witnesses said, the militants disarmed the soldiers and herded them into the forest where they would be executed. Only seven soldiers were initially ambushed in Bonta but the militants ordered them to put a distress call to the other five soldiers guarding Mr Odeh's house in Okpute.
In a thick forest near Gbinde village in Bonta, the local combatants took out the soldiers in batches of five and seven, witnesses said, and burnt them alive. Their two Hilux vans were also set ablaze while their arms and munitions were carted away.
"What really annoyed our boys was that the army boys shot at them," Mr Jembe said. "And once those bush boys hear the sound of a gun, that's the end."
The army's stance
The Nigerian Army claimed the soldiers were killed by over 150 bandits who ambushed them while intervening in the warring communities to ensure peace was restored. In a classified document seen by PREMIUM TIMES, the military claimed their troops, led by a certain Captain Adebayo, had done "credibly well" covering other areas in the state, such as Katsina-Ala, during similar operations.
"On passing through Konshinsha, which is a regular route used by own troops deployed in Oju and Kastina-Ala, they were ambushed by a group of armed bandits from Konshinsha. The bandits numbered over 150 were well-armed and encircled the officer and the troops with him," the leaked document read in parts.
After a long wait for the troops without any sign of their arrival, patrolling soldiers from Oju, led by 92NA/33/1251 WO Solomon Augustine, went in search of their colleagues but failed to return, the army said.
"After several hours, calls were made to their mobile phones and their numbers were going through. The phones rang but were not answered. Consequently, a robust search and rescue joint operation of own troops and OPWS were sent to search for them on the same day," the document added.
The army said its troops commenced a search with a close air raid in a rescue operation for the missing officer and the 11 other soldiers, noting that "lots of the bandits were killed while several others scattered and fled in different directions."
However, residents of Gbinde village where the soldiers were executed said the killer Bonta boys were not as many as the army claimed. "The boys were not even up to 25," one of them said -- a claim corroborated by militants who spoke exclusively to PREMIUM TIMES.
When contacted, Clement Onaa, the chairman of Oju Local Government Area, denied the alleged immersion of the soldiers in the communal war. Mr Onaa said he has not personally confirmed the involvement of a brigadier-general in the war as claimed by Bonta residents.
"You know anytime there is war, you'll be hearing rumours that have no nexus with the truth," he said. "I have not heard anything like that and should hear, it is a domicile rumour."
Andyson Egbodo, the president of the Igede group in Oju, corroborated Mr Onna's claim and wondered if it was possible for a single military man to deploy soldiers into a communal conflict.
Mr Egbodo also said that the soldiers were not sent on a peace mission to Bonta as the army claimed, noting "they [the soldiers] were on a different assignment" when the militants ambushed them.
The vengeful military raid in Bonta
Following the killing of their colleagues, over a hundred soldiers stormed Bonta in combat fashion, firing heavy artillery into the north and south of the community and killing innocent citizens. In a previous reporting series, this reporter revealed how the vengeful soldiers killed over 50 villagers, including women, children and elderly persons. But the army, in a statement, said its troops only killed 10 bandits who they claimed were responsible for the killing of their colleagues.
"Over 10 of them were killed and one AK 47 rifle belonging to one of the missing soldiers was recovered," the army claimed. "The advance continued till night and at about 061935A Apr 21 with the help of local informants, the corpses of the missing officer and soldiers were found."
However, Samuel Ortom, the governor of Benue, denied the massacring of dozens of innocent villagers in the state, despite the foolproof evidence that emerged after the fatal incident. He re-echoed the army's position saying the murdered soldiers were on a peace mission in the state.
On April 12, 2021, during the burial of the murdered soldiers in Makurdi, Mr Ortom apologised to the army on behalf of the state, noting that those involved in the murder would be punished.
"We condemn the killing of the soldiers who were out to maintain peace," he said. "An attack on security men is an attack on all. The attack was uncalled for and unwarranted."
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PREMIUM TIMES contacted Onyema Nwachukwu, the army's spokesman, for reactions to our new findings on the matter but he failed to pick up his calls.
He also did not respond to our reporter's message seeking information on the allegations levied against Mr Odeh by Bonta residents. Before then, however, our reporter had, on several occasions, tried to reach Mr Odeh but his line was not available.
The genesis of the crisis
The violent conflict between the Tiv and Igede communities has roots in the colonial era when some Igede people sought refuge in Konshinsha, a Tiv land. Displaced after feuding with the colonial masters, the Igede natives settled in the Ochoro, Ogbegwu and Ibadon areas of Konshinsha, which shares a boundary with another Igede community in the Obi Local Government Area of the state, local historians told PREMIUM TIMES.
The Igede people in Obi and the Tiv in Konshinsha had made a covenant for "permanent" peace, local elders familiar with the history of the land said. Upon their arrival to Konshinsha, the Igede people from Oju were asked to maintain the existing peace deal. But many decades later, they formed other settlements in Okpute and Okinga areas of Konshinsha, sharing a common boundary with Mbator, a village in the Bonta community.
However, a violent dispute ensued when the Igede natives claimed their new settlements belonged to the Oju LGA. The Tiv people in Konshinsha revolted, asking their Igede neighbours to leave their land or live by their terms.
In 1997, what started as a communal clash turned into bloody clashes with both parties targeting one another.
By 2020, Bonta and Okpute had become theatres of bloodshed over the boundary dispute. And by 2021, youths from the two warring communities had formed militia groups to launch attacks and reprisals, causing a bloody violence wave.
The communal war got the attention of the state government, necessitating the intervention of the police and soldiers, 12 of whom were murdered by the Bonta Boys.
