The assault came two days after a separate attack in Omulonye, a community in the Ugboju District of Otukpo Local Government Area, about 9 p.m. on October 7. Three people died there, among them a four-year-old boy, according to community members. The child's uncle was also killed, and the boy's mother was seriously wounded, residents said. Taken together, the two attacks left twelve dead in less than a week.
Local accounts blame suspected armed herdsmen. Nigerian news outlets have described the attackers in those words, and no arrests had been announced when this was written. Benue sits in the country's Middle Belt, where farming villages have been raided again and again, and where residents say justice rarely follows. In July, young people in the state blocked a federal highway after eighteen people were killed in about a day and a half.
Some details are still disputed. Death counts and the faith of the victims differ from one account to the next, and officials have not yet issued a full tally for Tse-Biliji. What is not in dispute is that a child of four is in the ground this week, and that families in these villages are sleeping in fear.
What a four-year-old tells us
I want you to stop on that little boy. He had done nothing. He owned no land, held no office, argued with no one. He was four years old, and a man with a weapon came to his house in the evening.
Every culture that has ever lived has known that something is deeply wrong when the smallest are struck down. Scripture says the same. The God who made heaven and earth counts each of these lives as precious, from the child in the womb to the old man at the end of his days. A nation that forgets this will let the weak be taken, whether by a gunman in a village or by a law that calls the unborn a thing.
Government has a duty here, and the Bible names it plainly. Rulers do not carry the sword for nothing. Their first task is to protect the innocent and punish those who do evil. Nigerian leaders must answer for the villages left undefended. Our own leaders in Washington, who have spoken up for persecuted believers abroad, do right to keep pressing that cause. Honor is owed to every office, and so is the demand that it do its work.
But a law or a soldier cannot reach the widow sitting on the floor of a burned house tonight. For her, and for the mother whose son is gone, the gospel has something no government can give. Jesus did not tell the grieving to hide their sorrow. He called them blessed in it.
"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." (Matthew 5:4)
That is not a cheap saying. It was spoken by the One who wept at a grave in Bethany and who then walked out of a tomb of His own. He knows the weight of a small coffin. And He did not merely sympathize from a distance. He gave His life on a cross for sinners, murderers among them, and rose again on the third day, so that death would not have the last word over those who trust Him.
The Psalmist wrote what these families now need to hear: "The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:18)
My friend, you may sit far from Benue State, with a full table and a quiet street. Do not look away. Remember these believers aloud, give to those who care for them, and speak for them to the men who hold authority. And ask yourself the question the news cannot answer for you: if the call came tonight, would you be ready to meet the Lord who comforts the mourning? He is near, and the door is open today.