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What role have Fulani herders and communal violence played in killings of Christians in Nigeria since 2015?
Executive summary
Since 2015, recurring clashes between mostly Muslim Fulani herders and largely Christian farmers in Nigeria’s Middle Belt have been linked to numerous killings, displacements and attacks on churches; reports and NGOs attribute hundreds to thousands of deaths in specific multi‑year periods but disagree on scale and motive (for example: Nigeria Watch and the U.S. State Department cite large Boko Haram and herder‑farmer death counts, while church and advocacy groups report higher tallies attributed to Fulani militants) [1] [2] [3]. Independent monitors such as ACLED and the BBC emphasize mixed causes — land, ethnicity, banditry and politics — and warn against reducing all violence to simple religious persecution [4] [1].
1. What the data and major monitors say: mixed drivers, contested tallies
International and local monitors record high levels of lethal violence since 2015 but attribute it to multiple drivers: Islamist insurgency (Boko Haram/ISWAP), banditry, and communal herder–farmer conflict linked to desertification and competition for grazing land [1] [5]. Some organizations (church networks, Release International, HART, Open Doors, Genocide Watch) frame much of the Middle Belt violence as attacks by “Fulani militants” disproportionately targeting Christians and report large casualty figures or community destructions [3] [6] [7]. Other reputable reporters and analysts (BBC citing ACLED and NGOs) say atrocities occurred on both sides and that there is “no evidence” Christians are being killed more than Muslims overall, urging attention to overlapping motives beyond religion [4] [8].
2. Fulani herders’ role described by advocacy groups
Several faith‑based and advocacy groups document repeated attacks by armed Fulani factions on Christian villages, churches and internally displaced people, and have produced lists of attacks and claimed death tolls — for instance, accounts of mass killings in Benue, Plateau and other Middle Belt states, and claims that Fulani militants killed more people than Boko Haram in some years [2] [3] [9]. These sources often present the violence as part of a campaign of displacement and land seizure, and at times use language such as “genocide” or “extermination” to describe impacts on Christian communities [3] [9].
3. Cautions from secular monitors and governments: correlation ≠ proven motive
Secular monitors and governmental reports caution that attributing attacks solely to religious persecution oversimplifies the conflict. The U.S. State Department and analyses cited by the BBC point to environmental pressures (desertification), population growth, banditry and weak rule of law as proximate causes of clashes between herders and farmers, noting that both Muslim and Christian communities have been victims [1] [4]. ACLED‑based commentary highlighted by the BBC disputes some widely circulated high casualty claims and emphasizes multi‑causal dynamics [4] [8].
4. Discrepancies in casualty counts and the politics of counting
Reported death tallies vary wildly depending on the source: church groups and some NGOs publish higher figures (e.g., thousands of Christian deaths in multi‑year spans), while other compilations separate Boko Haram/ISWAP deaths (e.g., Nigeria Watch figures) and attribute many community killings to local conflict and banditry [7] [1] [5]. Analysts note that groups with advocacy missions may compile detailed victim lists, but independent verification is often limited and contested by other monitors [2] [5].
5. Examples cited in reporting: episodic mass killings and targeted attacks
Reporting across sources documents episodic large‑scale attacks: church burnings, mass killings in Benue, Plateau and Kaduna states, and assaults on displaced‑person shelters; these incidents are variably attributed to “Fulani herdsmen”, bandits, or Islamist militants depending on the report [2] [10] [6]. Media and advocacy narratives emphasize different incidents as emblematic — which shapes public impressions and policy responses [6] [9].
6. How to interpret competing narratives and what’s missing
Available sources show consensus that violence is acute and that Fulani herders — including armed or militant factions — have been active perpetrators in many Middle Belt attacks, sometimes directed at Christian communities [3] [6]. At the same time, major monitors warn against portraying the conflict solely as religious persecution because ethnicity, land, climate, banditry and governance failures are central factors; independent, uniformly accepted casualty datasets covering “Christians killed since 2015” do not exist in the provided sources [4] [1] [5]. Available sources do not mention a single, universally verified total number of Christians killed since 2015.
7. Policy and reporting implications: look for nuance and verification
Journalists and policymakers should treat high casualty claims as serious but check provenance: cross‑reference church lists, NGO reports, local investigations and independent datasets [2] [5]. Framing matters — labeling the violence purely “religious persecution” can obscure land‑use drivers and impede solutions that address climate, governance and security failures that fuel herder–farmer clashes [1] [4].
Summary conclusion: Fulani herders — including armed factions described as militants by advocacy groups — have been implicated in many deadly attacks on predominantly Christian rural communities since 2015, and church and advocacy sources report large numbers and severe patterns of targeting; however, secular monitors and international analysts emphasize mixed causes, question some casualty claims, and warn that available reporting does not establish an uncontested, single narrative or total death toll [3] [2] [4] [1].