Faith-based NGO Saves 14 Lives with Anti-Venom, Commissions New Home for Massacre Survivor in Benue

…says ₦6.63 million a month can keep emergency medicine available in IDP camps

Our Correspondent

A faith-based humanitarian organization says it has saved 14 displaced Christians in the last month through a new anti-venom initiative in Benue State, including 8-year-old Terkende Bua, who a poisonous snake bit.

Equipping The Persecuted said Terkende’s family, living in an Internally Displaced Persons camp, had nowhere to turn after the bite.

The organization’s team, including field officers Franc Utoo and Andy Nomsor, provided treatment, and the girl is responding well.

“One little girl is alive today because someone chose to care,” the family wrote in a message to the organization.

This medium gathered that Equipping the Persecuted launched the anti-venom program last month in response to a growing threat of snakebites in overcrowded camps in Benue.

Recall that many of the families currently in the camps were displaced by terrorist attacks and have already lost homes and loved ones.

“After surviving all of that, they should not lose their lives simply because anti-venom was unavailable when they needed it,” the organization stated. To maintain an adequate supply and respond quickly to emergencies, the group said it needs approximately about ₦6.63 million ($5,000) per month, at the current official exchange rate.

Alongside emergency medical response, the organization is also focused on rebuilding. Only recently, it commissioned a new permanent two-bedroom home in Yelewata for Peter Akera. Akera lost his wife and four children on August 24, 2021, during an attack by more than 80-armed men in Yelewata. He survived because he had stepped away to buy water.

In the years after, Mr. Akera lived in a damaged mud structure and at the IDP camp at International Market in Makurdi.

Information from Equipping the Persecuted indicates that the new house, built on Akera’s ancestral land, is fully furnished with beds, sofas, curtains and solar power.

It was confirmed by this magazine that Akera, who has remarried and now has a wife and child, has moved into the home with his new family.

“We did not build him a shack,” the organization said. “We wanted to build something with excellence, something Peter and his family could be proud to call home.”

Peter’s house is the first under a larger plan to build 100 quality homes in Yelewata over the next three years for survivors of the Father’s Day massacre and other attacks. Each home costs about $14,000, roughly ₦18.57 million, houses about four people, and includes solar power. The total project is estimated at $1.4 million.

The organization said the broader Yelewata initiative also includes drilling wells for clean water, building a primary and secondary school, and strengthening community security.

It stated that its expansion has also created an urgent need for transportation, adding that it is seeking 10 trucks at approximately ₦26.53 million ($20,000) each, to convey staff, medical supplies, food, construction materials and emergency relief to difficult areas in the Middle Belt.

“When an attack occurs, reliable vehicles can make the difference between arriving in time to help and arriving too late,” the group said.

Equipping The Persecuted said its teams continue to treat wounded attack victims, pay medical bills, deliver food and aid to IDP camps, supply medicine, and support village security efforts across the Middle Belt.

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