Herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria

The Nigerian government has been unwilling to address the causes of the crisis. Fighting Boko Haram in the North-East and facing rising levels of violence in different regions of the country, the government has nonetheless tried to implement a few measures.
Since 2012, there have been projects to create transhumance corridors through the Middle Belt. Mostly supported by Northern lawmakers and opposed by their Southern counterparts, these endeavours have been rarely successful.[9]
In 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari tried to create Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) settlements. His decision was met with fierce criticism.[10]

The majority of farmer-herder clashes have occurred between Muslim Fulani herdsmen and Christian farmers, exacerbating ethnoreligious hostilities.[11] Insecurity and violence have led many populations to create self-defence forces and ethnic militias, which have engaged in further violence.[12] Critics and media have accused Fulanis of trying to Islamize the Middle Belt. In 2014, many Nigerian and foreign newspapers widely reported the Global Terrorism Index which ranked a "little known" Fulani militant group as the fourth deadliest terrorist group on the planet.[13] In 2019, journalist Tunji Ajibade accused the media of promoting ethnic hatred, by often attributing killings to Fulani herdsmen without any confirmation from the police. In contrast, ethnic and/or identities of attackers targeting Muslim or Fulani communities are often unidentified by the media.[14]
Blaming the herders and the Fulanis in particular for an alleged genocide must be understood in a context of intense rivalry between different communities in the country.[15] In general, the accusation of genocide has been commonly used in Nigeria since the Biafran War. Even if it has been never been proven that the Nigerian government planned the mass killing of Biafrans or Igbos (who were then mostly Christian) between 1967 and 1970,[16] the term is still being used today to describe killings of Christians in the country. Some Christian groups consider the presence of Muslims a threat and disseminate fake news about a supposed Muslim plot aiming at Islamising the whole of Nigeria.[17] One of their strategies is to weaponise the term ‘genocide’ (especially on social media) in order to attract the attention of Nigerian and foreign media.[18] Genocide Watch list Nigeria as being at stage 9 of its 10 stages for genocide citing the herder-farmer conflict as one of the reasons for the ranking.[19]

Nigerian and foreign newspapers are often unable to provide exact numbers of casualties. Despite the high number of attacks, Nigerian and foreign journalists have rarely access to first-hand testimonies and tend to report inaccurate figures.[20]

• According to the Global Terrorism Index, these conflicts resulted in over 800 deaths by 2015.[21]
• The year 2016 saw further incidents in Agatu, Benue and Nimbo, Enugu State.[22][23]
• In April 2018 Fulani gunmen allegedly killed 19 people during an attack on the church, afterwards they burnt dozens of nearby homes.[24]
• In June 2018, over 200 people were killed and 50 houses were burnt in clashes between farmers and Fulani cattle herders in Plateau State.[25][26][27]
• In October 2018, Fulani herdsmen killed at least 19 people in Bassa.[28]
• On 16 December 2018, Militants believed to be Fulani Herdsmen attacked a village in Jema'a, killing 15 people and injuring at least 24 others, the attack occurred at a wedding ceremony.[29][30]
• On 11 February 2019, an attack on an Adara settlement named Ungwar Bardi by suspected Fulani gunmen killed 11. Reprisal attack by Adara targeted settlements of the Fulani killing at least 141 people with 65 missing. The attacks took place in Kajuru LGA of Kaduna State.[31] According to a governor the motive was to destroy specific communities.[32][33]
• The Coalition Against Kajuru killings stated on 18 March 2019 that 130 people have been killed in a series of revenge attacks since the massacre announced by El-Rufai.[34]
• In January 2018 about 10 persons were killed in an attack and reprisal involving herders and local farmers in Numan local council of Adamawa State.[35][36][37]
• In May 2018 over 400 herdsmen attacked four villages of Lamurde, Bang, Bolk, Zumoso and Gon in Numan and Lamurde local councils of Adamawa State killing 15 people.[38]
• 21 people were killed by herdsmen in a village in Demsa local government area of Adamawa State.[39]
• 32 Christians were murdered by Muslim Fulani herdsmen[40]

• List of massacres in Nigeria
• Communal conflicts in Nigeria
• Fulani herdsmen
• Sudanese nomadic conflicts
• March 2019 attacks against Fulani herders
• Nimbo massacre
• Agatu massacres
• Janjawid

• Adebanwi, Wale, ‘Terror, Territoriality and the Struggle for Indigeneity and Citizenship in Northern Nigeria’, Citizenship Studies, 13.4 (2009), 349–63
• Amnesty International, Harvest of Death: Three Years of Bloody Clashes between Farmers and Herders in Nigeria, 2018 <>
• Bearak, Max, Jane Hahn, Mia Torres, and Olivier Laurent, ‘The Ordinary People Keeping the Peace in Nigeria’s Farmer-Herder Conflict’, The Washington Post, 10 December 2018 <The ordinary people keeping the peace in Nigeria's deadly land feuds> [accessed 25 December 2019]
• Higazi, Adam, ‘Farmer-Pastoralist Conflicts on the Jos Plateau, Central Nigeria: Security Responses of Local Vigilantes and the Nigerian State’, Conflict, Security and Development, 16.4 (2016), 365–85
• Last, Murray, ‘Muslims and Christians in Nigeria: An Economy of Political Panic’, The Round Table : The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 96.392 (2007), 605–16
• Last, Murray, ‘The Search for Security in Muslim Northern Nigeria’, Africa, 78.1 (2008), 41–63
• Mustapha, Abdul Raufu, and David Ehrhardt, eds., Creed & Grievance: Muslim-Christian Relations & Conflict Resolution in Northern Nigeria (Oxford: James Currey, 2018)
• Ochonu, Moses E, ‘Fulani Expansion and Subcolonial Rule in Early Colonial Adamawa Province’, in Colonialism by Proxy Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014), pp. 129–56
• Reynolds, Jonathan, The Time of Politics: Islam and the Politics of Legitimacy in Northern Nigeria 1950-1966 (San Francisco: International Scholar Publications, 1999)