How have Nigerian government and independent human-rights groups assessed the role of Fulani militias compared with jihadist groups in violence against Christians in 2025?
Executive summary
In 2025 the Nigerian government publicly framed communal and extremist violence as a cross‑cutting security crisis affecting “people across faiths and regions,” rejecting characterizations of a state‑led campaign against Christians and emphasizing jihadist threats such as Boko Haram and ISWAP [1]. Independent human‑rights groups, faith‑based monitors, and specialist researchers painted a different picture: they documented that Fulani militias — operating in land‑based attacks across the Middle Belt — accounted for a large and growing share of killings of Christian farming communities, alleged impunity by security forces, and patterns consistent with territorial displacement [2] [3] [4].
1. Government posture: universalist framing, emphasis on jihadists, and denial of targeted persecution
Federal authorities insisted the security crisis is not a religiously selective campaign and highlighted that jihadist groups have killed people of all faiths, while refusing claims of a coordinated attempt to exterminate Christians; President Tinubu and senior advisors argued violence affects citizens across regions and that there is “no credible evidence” of a state‑led genocide [1]. Government messaging has coupled appeals for foreign assistance with assertions of sovereignty and occasional rebuttals of external narratives that single out Christians as uniquely persecuted [1] [3].
2. Independent human‑rights and monitoring groups: data, patterns and the rise of Fulani militias
Multiple independent researchers and watchdogs reported that a plurality — and in some datasets a majority — of recent civilian killings were linked to Fulani militias conducting ground invasions of rural Christian villages, with organizations like ORFA and the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa attributing very high shares of killings to Fulani actors and describing a modus operandi of massacres, arson and displacement rather than spectacular suicide attacks [2] [5]. These groups supplied stark figures: ORFA reported Fulani militias accounted for 47% of civilian killings in a given period and that land‑based community attacks comprised roughly 79% of civilian deaths, producing concentrated Christian losses in states such as Benue [2] [5].
3. Accusations of impunity and selective enforcement against Fulani militias
Human‑rights commentators and some civil society actors accused the state of inadequate or delayed responses to Fulani militia attacks, citing reports that security forces often arrived after massacres and failed to seize weapons or prosecute known perpetrators, fostering perceptions of impunity and even allegations that elements within the security apparatus tolerate or enable violence [6] [3]. These concerns underlie campaigns by religious leaders and NGOs pressing for stronger protection, prosecutions, and international attention [7] [4].
4. Jihadist groups: different footprint, different victim profile
Monitoring groups such as ACLED and other analysts stressed that Islamist jihadists — notably Boko Haram and ISWAP — remain deadly but have a different geographic and tactical footprint concentrated in the North‑East, where many victims are Muslim; ACLED’s synthesis emphasized that most victims of jihadist groups have been Muslim, complicating broad claims that jihadists are the primary killers of Christians nationwide [1]. Jihadist groups have, however, explicitly targeted Christians in some attacks and issued threats to Christian populations, underscoring overlapping but distinct threats [8] [9].
5. Competing narratives, political agendas, and evidentiary disputes
Disagreements between government statements and independent monitors reflect different data sets, methodological choices, and political stakes: faith‑based and diaspora groups pressing for designations such as “Country of Particular Concern” emphasize high Christian casualty counts and even allege genocidal intent tied to Fulani militias, while analysts and some researchers caution against conflating communal resource conflicts with coordinated religious extermination and underline that jihadists also kill Muslims in large numbers [3] [10] [9]. These conflicting framings are amplified by advocacy goals on all sides — from government sovereignty concerns to campaigners seeking international intervention — so claims must be read against organizational agendas [3] [11].
6. Bottom line: complementary but distinct threats and unresolved accountability
By mid‑2025 the clearest empirical picture offered by independent monitors was that Fulani militias were responsible for a large share of land‑based massacres disproportionately affecting Christian farming communities in the Middle Belt, while jihadist groups continued to inflict heavy, often regionally concentrated violence with a different victim mix; the Nigerian government officially maintained a cross‑communal framing and resisted characterizations of state complicity or genocide, even as critics cited delayed responses and selective enforcement that fed perceptions of impunity [2] [1] [6]. Where reporting is sparse or contested — for example precise attribution of every massacre or the degree of state complicity — available sources do not uniformly settle those disputes, leaving space for further independent forensic investigation [10] [3].