Many villages in north-central Nigeria remain deserted nearly three months after a series of coordinated attacks. Gunmen targeted over 20 villages in the Bokkos local government area of Plateau State over several days in December 2023. Thousands of people remain displaced.
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Scores Killed In Massacre Of Farmers In Nigeria
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According to a report by SBM, an Africa-focused geopolitical research firm, farmers in northwestern states like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara and Jigawa, where banditry is widespread, often pay bandits twice just to be allowed to use their land during the planting and harvesting seasons. The situation has adversely affected Nigeria's food security.
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A report by an Africa-focused geopolitical firm highlights cases in banditry-ravaged states like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, and Jigawa. Farmers say the bandits' actions have forced many to abandon their farms, which leads to decreased food production.
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While Nigeria consumes nearly three million metric tonnes of palm oil annually, domestic output is only around 1.3 million metric tonnes, with a considerable portion being imported. Recognizing the immense potential, Nigerian palm farmers believe that with proper support, the sector could significantly contribute to the country's earnings.
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The additional deployment follows attacks by gunmen who invaded communities in Plateau state on Christmas Eve, killing over 150 people. Analysts believe the government needs to employ more than just a heavy hand to bring peace to the area.
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Villagers missing in Nigeria two days after suspected nomadic herders kill 140
Communities in Plateau state, Nigeria are in mourning after at least 160 people were killed in a series of attacks by armed groups over the Christmas weekend. The gunmen targeted about 20 villages across the Bokkos and Barkin Ladi areas.
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According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, as many as 26 million Nigerians could face severe hunger by next year. The UN agency says several issues, but mainly insecurity, contribute to the problem. Experts have called on the government to address these concerns to safeguard food production.
Islamic extremists killed eight farmers and abducted 10 in an attack in northeastern Nigeria, officials said Friday — the latest in a volatile region that is a key part of the country's breadbasket and where militants have threatened food supplies.
The farmers were ambushed in the bush in the Borno state's Mafa district Thursday. The attackers slit their throats, authorities said.
Babagana Zulum, the state governor, said the attack was an attempt to "sabotage the successes of the government" as it struggles to have those displaced in Borno return to their villages and rebuild their lives.
He said the security forces need to rise to the challenge but also urged residents to take individual precautions.
"We must rise to our responsibility and address the situation," Zulum said. "I've told the people to be resilient, and they should be security-conscious and avoid remote locations."
Islamic extremist rebels launched an insurgency in Borno in 2009 to establish their radical interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the region. At least 35,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced because of the violence by the militant Boko Haram group and a breakaway faction backed by the Islamic State group.
Borno's farming communities have been frequently targeted in recent months, raising fears of extreme hunger as U.N. agencies continue to warn of famine.
On Friday, local villagers are mourning the slain farmers while also decrying inadequate security measures in remote and volatile areas.
Modu Ibrahim, a resident, said there were no security forces where the farmers' bodies were found. The extremists spared one teenager whom they asked to "deliver the message" about the attack to other villagers, Ibrahim said.
The Islamic insurgency in the northeast has also overstretched Nigeria's security forces as they continue to battle other crises across the country, including continuing clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farming communities in northwest and central regions of the West African nation.
Sixteen people have been killed in two attacks in north-central Nigeria in a region struggling with inter-communal violence, the army said.
Clashes between nomadic herders and farming communities often flare in Plateau State, which sits on the dividing line between the mostly Muslim north and Nigeria’s predominantly Christian south.
In the latest violence on Tuesday, half a dozen members of a local farmers’ self-defense group were killed by gunmen in Riyom district while another 10 people were killed in an attack in Mangu area, an army spokesman said.
“Six lives were lost in Riyom,” said army Major Ishaku Takwa told AFP on Wednesday.
“Another attack took place in some communities in Mangu and 10 persons died.”
Plateau state assembly member representing Mangu South, Bala Fwangje, said 14 people had been killed in that area.
“We heard that about 14 people were killed, houses destroyed, property burnt. I am yet to get the full details,” he said.
Since May, nearly 200 people have been killed in clashes between the Berom farming communities, who are mainly Christian, and the cattle breeding communities of Fulani Muslims in the Riyom, Barkin Ladi, and Mangu areas of Plateau.
It was unclear what exactly triggered the recent attacks in Plateau, but tit-for-tat killings between herders and farmers often spiral into village raids by heavily armed gangs who kidnap, loot and kill villagers.
The Plateau crisis is one of the many security challenges facing President Bola Tinubu who took the helm of Africa’s most populous nation at the end of May.
AFP
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Dozens of cattle herders and bystanders were killed and several injured by a suspected bomb blast in Nigeria's north central region, a state government official and spokesperson of the national cattle breeders said on Wednesday.
The incident happened on Tuesday night between Nasarawa and Benue states in north central Nigeria.
The spokesperson of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, Tasi'u Suleman, said a group of Fulani herders were moving their cattle to Nasarawa from Benue, where authorities had confiscated the animals for breaching anti-grazing laws, when an explosion rocked the area.
"At least about 54 people died instantly. Those who were injured were countless," Suleman said.
Nasarawa governor Abdullahi Sule did not say how many people were killed, but told reporters that a bomb blast was responsible for the deaths.
He did not say who was believed to be behind the explosion, but said he had been meeting with security agencies "to ensure that we continue to douse the tension" that could be caused by the incident.
North central Nigeria, also known as the Middle Belt, is prone to violence due to clashes between Fulani pastoralists and farmers, who are mainly Christian, which is often painted as ethno-religious conflict.
But experts say population growth and climate change has led to an expansion of the area dedicated to farming, leaving less land available for open grazing by nomads' herds of cattle.
The governor's spokesperson Abubakar Ladan told Reuters that mass burial for those killed were held earlier on Wednesday.
By Ardo Hazzad and Ahmed Kingimi, Reuters
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Clashes between herdsmen and farmers in the Nigerian state of Benue left at least 23 people dead, a local official said on Thursday, the latest deadly incident fuelled by growing pressure on land resources in Africa's most populous country.
Violence between farmers and pastoralists has become increasingly common in recent years as population growth leads to an expansion of the area dedicated to farming, leaving less land available for open grazing by nomads' herds of cattle.
Kertyo Tyounbur, chairman of the Ukum local government area of Benue where the violence took place, gave a death toll of 23.
Local resident William Samson said the trouble started on Tuesday when villagers killed two herders and stole their cattle. This was followed by a reprisal attack by herdsmen on Wednesday on the village of Gbeji, he said.
Reuters could not verify his account from other sources in the remote rural area.
Benue is one of Nigeria's Middle Belt states, where the majority Muslim North meets the predominantly Christian South.
Competition over land use is particularly intractable in the Middle Belt as the fault lines between farmers and herders often overlap with ethnic and religious divisions.
The Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast has worsened the problem by driving herders into the Middle Belt and further south, analysts say, while climate change and increasing aridity in the North are also contributing factors.
By Chijioke Ohuocha
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Mass burial in Nigeria for 73 killed in violence between herdsmen and farmers
One sunny afternoon in April, Rahmata Adeagbo, was seated on a bed in her brother’s house where she now lives, staring blankly at the visitors.
“Ade-lo-wo … Ade-a-gbo,” the 50-year-old muttered after a long silence, painfully stringing the syllables of her late husband’s name.
On June 5, 2021, he had stepped out after receiving calls that nomadic herdsmen had laid siege to their town, Igangan, some 176km (109 miles) away from Lagos. The next time she saw him, his body was ridden with bullets, one of 11 deaths during the attack.
Before that episode, Igangan and six neighbouring towns – all in Oyo state – had experienced a number of clashes stemming from disagreements between Indigenous Yoruba farmers and nomadic Fulani herdsmen.
At the root of the crisis is cattle grazing on farmlands across Nigeria but the battle for resources has been exacerbated by climate change across the Sahel, worsening economic conditions and in some cases, ethnicity and religion; the nomads are mostly Muslim and the farmers are predominantly Christians.
Entire villages have been displaced and schools closed for successive sessions. Interstate food supply chains are disrupted as cattle markets have been razed and farmers have been unable to tend to their crops or have seen them destroyed.
In central Nigeria, the hotspot, as many as 13 million people are at risk of hunger, the World Food Programme said earlier this year.
Between 2016 and 2018, there were 3,641 deaths nationwide due to the conflict, according to Amnesty International. The majority of the reported victims were Indigenes and herdsmen were reported as the aggressors, launching deadly raids frequently.
But even in the southwest, where interfaith households are common and religious tolerance is deemed the highest nationwide, these clashes have become rife. In recent years, it has morphed into more dangerous dimensions involving kidnappings, rape, highway robberies, and coordinated destruction of farmlands.
In 2019, an anti-open grazing law addressing what many experts have identified as the root cause of the disagreements – resource sharing – was passed into law in Oyo. But it has not yet been implemented.
Two years later, as attacks in Igangan continued without perpetrators being apprehended, non-state actors led by a Yoruba ethnic rights activist, Sunday Adeyemo Igboho, demolished property belonging to Fulani residents.
Residents told Al Jazeera that this eviction and the controversies that followed likely spurred the June 5 attack.
Growing distrust
According to a report [PDF] by the International Crisis Group, factors that have allowed Nigeria’s pastoralist crisis to fester range from impunity and eroding confidence in the country’s security forces to the government’s poor response to early warnings.
For years, the national security architecture has been overstretched by armed groups running riot in northeast, northwest and central Nigeria.
In January 2020, as cases of insecurity spiked in southwest Nigeria, the six state governors in the region agreed to create a regional security network. It was codenamed Amotekun (Yoruba for leopard). The federal government kicked against the move citing constitutional concerns so the governors redesigned it into a state-based security vigilante to support the police, which is controlled by Abuja.
In Oyo State, the outfit launched in November 2020.
Even though the June 2021 attack remains the last full-scale one coordinated by herdsmen on residents of any of the seven neighbouring towns, residents told Al Jazeera that neither the recent reduction in attacks nor the government’s efforts had eased their fears.
Matthew Page, an associate fellow at the UK-based think-tank Chatham House, says their decision not to trust the authorities’ promise of safety is justified, explaining that “security agencies are ineffective because authorities have tolerated endemic corruption and turned a blind eye to their operational failures”.
Idayat Hassan, director of Abuja-based CDD, agreed, saying it is difficult for residents to trust the state because it has lost the monopoly of violence.
“The inability of the state to respond even when furnished with information ahead of attacks also makes citizens believe they are either complicit or abetting,” she said. “This further eroded the thin trust existing between citizens and governments.”
Peace and unease
Before her husband’s death, Adeagbo was a housewife who occasionally engaged in farmwork but her mental health has begun to suffer since and she can no longer work.
“When her husband died, she suffered a serious emotional issue,” her brother, Akeem Rasheed, told Al Jazeera. “Her husband’s death and the unavailability of resources to cater for her kids pushed her to the brink.”
Initially, he took her to the closest neuropsychiatric hospital, 77km [48 miles] from the town, for treatment. After two months, he had to take her back home because he could no longer afford her hospital bills.
“They allowed me to take her away only because I promised to keep bringing her for regular check-ups, something I have not done because I don’t have money again,” Rasheed said.
As her mental state declines, her family is clinging to the hope that she will get better and that the town will not be attacked again.
But despite no attacks in recent months, residents of other communities in the region are choosing pragmatism over hope.
Across villages in Ogun state, next door to Lagos, residents are relocating to the neighbouring Benin Republic. One of them is Clement Oyebanjo, a teacher in Agbon village who moved there briefly last February after an attack in his village killed four people.
“We are not at ease and sleep with our eyes half open because we know as long as open-grazing is not banned, these Fulani herders will come back,” says Oyebanjo who is prepared to return to Benin if another attack happens.
‘Violence entrepreneurs’
After Igangan was attacked in June, its residents created a new vigilante group. One of its members was Emmanuel Oguntoyinbo whose younger brother was shot dead on his motorcycle by the attackers while returning from a party.
“We, the youths of the town, that decided that we needed to do that because initially, the community employed some vigilantes from outside, but when the government refused to pay, they left,” the 35-year-old told Al Jazeera.
Every night, armed with Dane guns and charms, they take positions across the town while others patrol strategic places in groups. The community’s youth leader, Olayiwola Olusegun, told Al Jazeera that every household contributes money every month to provide ammunition.
In Agbon, the local vigilante group continues to recruit new members. In neighbouring Ibeku, residents are now wary of visitors and report unknown faces immediately to the town’s traditional ruler.
In Ondo State, dozens of elder residents of communities like Okeluse and Molege, have fled too, while youths who stayed behind have picked up arms to protect themselves.
Meanwhile, Wasiu Olatunbosun, Oyo State commissioner for information, told Al Jazeera the government had put in place the machinery to secure towns like Igangan. He insisted that residents who claim to stay up at night because of their fear of another attack must be opposition members.
For experts like Page, the outcome of these dynamics could be an “expansion of violence entrepreneurs” and more instability even if residents embracing self-defence is justified.
The only difference, he said, between “a vigilante, political thug, insurgent, or bandit is for whom or what cause he fights”.
By Adebayo Abdulrahman
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Armed groups have terrorised people in northern Nigeria for years. The 'bandits' burn down villages, steal cattle and kidnap people for ransom. The government appears to be struggling to stop a rise in attacks. Gunmen killed least 200 people in Zamfara state on Tuesday, in an apparent retaliation against military air strikes on the armed groups' hideouts. So what can be done to stop the assaults? Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom Guests: Mike Ejiofor - Former Director of Nigeria's State Security Service Bulama Bukarti - Analyst, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change Aliyu Musa - Independent researcher on conflict and Nigerian politics
Nigeria’s presidency says dozens of people have been killed in violence between farmers and herders in the country’s central Nasarawa state.
In a statement late on Tuesday, the office of President Muhammadu Buhari said at least 45 farmers were killed in the violence that erupted on Friday. Dozens more were wounded, it said.
Buhari “expressed grief over the heart-wrenching” killings and said his government would “leave no stone unturned in fishing out the perpetrators of this senseless and barbaric incident, and bring them to justice”.
Local police said the violence broke out when armed Fulani herders attacked villagers from the Tiv ethnic group over the killing of a kinsman that they blamed on Tiv farmers. The unrest continued until Sunday. The police initially gave a death toll of eight.
Nasarawa state police spokesman Ramhan Nansel earlier said military and police teams had deployed in the area to restore calm and arrest the perpetrators.
“We received a complaint on the killing of a Fulani herdsman but while the investigation was ongoing, a reprisal attack was carried out in Hangara village and neighbouring Kwayero village,” Ramhan Nansel,
“Eight people were killed in the attacks and their bodies were recovered by the police and taken to hospital.”
But Peter Ahemba of the Tiv Development Association said the death toll was higher.
“We recovered more than 20 corpses of our people killed in the attacks in 12 villages across Lafia, Obi and Awe districts where around 5,000 were displaced,” he said, adding that many people were still missing.
Deadly clashes between nomadic cattle herders and local farmers over grazing and water rights are common in central Nigeria.
The internecine conflict has taken on an ethnic and religious dimension in recent years. The Fulani herders are Muslim, and the farmers are primarily Christian.
The friction, which has roots dating back more than a century, was caused by droughts, population growth, the expansion of sedentary farming into communal areas as well as poor governance.
Violence by criminal gangs of cattle thieves among the herders, who raid villages, killing and burning homes after looting them, has compounded the situation.
The Governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule, has promised to go after killers of Fulani herders and Tiv farmers.
“There was needless loss of lives of our citizens. Such act of violence is most unfortunate, condemnable, and unacceptable and will not be condoned by this administration,” he was quoted as saying by the Sahara Reporters news site.
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Attacked by armed bandits, and being kidnapped or forced to pay levies before they can reach their farmlands. Farmers in Northern Nigeria are caught between protecting their lives, and their livelihoods. Deteriorating security in the Northwest is reducing food reserves and adding to the nation's food crisis. It's estimated output has dropped by sixty percent. The violence is compounding challenges caused by climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. The UN has warned people in parts of the Northeast are also at risk of famine.
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Security forces and volunteer vigilante groups in northeastern Nigeria are searching to find people still missing after dozens of civilians working in rice fields were slaughtered by armed men over the weekend.
Locals say they recovered 43 bodies after Saturday’s attacks in villages near Maiduguri, the capital of the restive Borno state, which has been plagued by an armed campaign for more than 10 years.
Amid divergent figures, the United Nations late on Sunday amended an earlier statement putting the death toll at 110 people to say that “tens of civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded” in the “brutal” assault that was led by men on motorcycles.
In the statement, Edward Kallon, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria, also cited “reports that several women may have been kidnapped” and called for their immediate release and return to safety.
In Zabarmari village, where a funeral was held for the victims of the attack on Sunday morning, a local resident who identified himself as Umar said “no one knows the exact number of people killed”.
“We can’t account for some farmers who were there during the attack,” Umar told Al Jazeera. “We don’t know if they are still hiding inside the bush or if the attackers kidnapped them,” he said, adding that local members of government-backed vigilante groups were currently conducting search operations.
“We have buried the ones we can find and hopefully we will recover more when the vigilante men return from their search,” Umar said.
“We have buried the ones we can find and hopefully we will recover more when the vigilante men return from their search,” Umar said.
‘Insecurity is pervasive, unrelenting’
But the news of the latest gruesome attack – one account reportedly said the attackers tied up the men and women harvesting crops and slit their throats – was met with outrage across the country.
On social media, many expressed indignation at the government’s failure to stop the bloodshed despite repeated promises. People called for a review of the country’s security system, including the dismissal of security chiefs.
“Contrary to the government’s trite, predictable assertions, it is obvious that insecurity is pervasive, unrelenting in Nigeria. The Buhari administration and the security agencies are wanting in tackling the security challenges bedevilling Nigeria,” Don Okereke, a security analyst, told Al Jazeera.
“The bitter truth is that Boko Haram have not been defeated, tactically or otherwise. A swathe of land in the northeast and northwest of the country can be likened to ungoverned space, hence terrorists will continue to launch sporadic attacks,” he said.
Most of the victims of Saturday’s assault were reported to be labourers hailing from Sokoto state in northwest Nigeria who were hired to work some 1,000km (620 miles) away on rice farms in Borno state.
“Pragmatically speaking, it is difficult to guarantee protection for farmers in northern Nigeria, nay other parts of the country because Nigerian security agencies are currently stretched and security agents cannot be everywhere at every point in time,” Okereke added.
After attending Sunday’s funeral, Borno State Governor Babagana Umara Zulum said people in the region were facing grim choices as they strive to survive.
“On one side, they stay at home [and] they may be killed by hunger and starvation,” Zulum said. “On the other, they go out to their farmlands and risk getting killed by the insurgents.”
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The UN says at least 110 civilians have been killed and many injured in attacks on two villages in northeast Nigeria. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. but the armed group Boko Haram has carried out a series of deadly assaults in the area in recent years. Security forces are looking for dozens more villagers who are missing, many of them women. It is the worst attack on civilians in Borno state this year. President Muhammadu Buhari claimed five years ago that Boko Haram had been defeated.
Scores are dead after armed men on motorcycles gruesomely attacked agricultural workers in northeastern Nigeria.
Officials say the attack occurred Saturday in the country's Borno state. Multiple outlets report that suspected Islamist militants attacked the farmers while they were harvesting the fields in a rural part of the state.
Residents told Reuters at least 70 were killed during attack. A U.N. official in the region, Edward Kallon, said "tens" of civilians were killed.
"The incident is the most violent direct attack against innocent civilians this year. I call for the perpetrators of this heinous and senseless act to be brought to justice," said Kallon, who serves as the resident and humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria.
The U.N. Security Council said that "those responsible for these terrorist attacks should be held accountable."
Reuters reports that 30 of the victims were beheaded in the attack. At least ten women were reportedly still missing as of Sunday.
Though no one has claimed responsibility, Reuters and the BBC note that at least two militant groups are active in the area: Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province.
Both groups have carried out massacres in the region before. More than 37,000 people have died in incidents involving Boko Haram, the Council on Foreign Relationsestimates.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said: "I condemn the killing of our hard-working farmers by terrorists in Borno state. The entire country is hurt by these senseless killings. My thoughts are with their families in this time of grief. May their souls rest in peace," the BBC reported.
On Sunday, 43 of those killed were buried in a service, according to Reuters, where the governor of Borno, Babagana Zulum, called on the federal government to recruit more forces to protect farmers in the area.
Zulum also made reference to rising food prices in the country, while speaking at the burials.
"In one side, they stay at home [where] they may be killed by hunger and starvation, on the other, they go out to their farmlands and risk getting killed by the insurgents," Zulum said, Reuters reported.
By Jason Slotkin
