By Mike Odeh Jame
(Abuja) For Tazaar Aloysius Dende—a resident of Yelewata, a predominantly Christian farming village in Guma County, Benue State—June 13, 2025, is etched in horror. That night, more than 270 Christians were massacred in a coordinated attack by Fulani militias.
“I lost over 30 relatives,” Dende told TruthNigeria. “My younger brother, his two wives, and their grandchildren were butchered.”
In nearby Otobi-Akpa, Otukpo County, 10 villagers were slaughtered, and more than 200 others were injured, according to local representative Kennedy Angbo.
Such atrocities are not isolated. In Plateau State, communities in Bokkos, Mangu, Barkin Ladi, Bassa, and Riyom have endured relentless violence, forced displacement, and the seizure of ancestral farmlands. In Taraba State—especially in Karim-Lamido, Takum, and Ussa—Christian villages such as Munga Lelau and Munga Dasso have been razed, with more than 1,000 families driven from their homes.
In Southern Kaduna, violence targeting the Adara, Atyap, and Akan-Ana communities has displaced more than 20,000 people. Dozens of villages have been destroyed or are now occupied by armed herders.
Across the Middle Belt, survivors describe a disturbing pattern: gunmen, often Fulani militias, arrive on motorcycles under the cover of night, torch homes, slaughter civilians, rename communities, and take over territories. Yet despite this brutality, many of Nigeria’s major national media outlets consistently downplay the scale and motive of the violence.
Media Framing: A Battle of Narratives
Daily Trust, one of Nigeria’s most widely read newspapers, regularly refers to such attacks as “herder-farmer clashes,” avoiding stronger terms such as “terrorism,” “genocide,” or “ethnic cleansing.”
On July 1, following the deaths of more than 70 people in Bokkos County of Plateau State on April 3, 2025, the paper portrayed the event as a land dispute rather than a sectarian, land-grabbing massacre.
Daily Trust informed its readers that:
“On April 3, gunmen reportedly attacked five communities in Bokkos LGA, killing over 70 farmers and setting several houses ablaze.”
Furthermore, “At least 45 people were reportedly killed in coordinated attacks on Zike and Kimakpa communities in the Kwall District of Bassa LGA on April 18.”
The fact that no fatalities were suffered by the hundreds of mercenaries armed with machetes and assault rifles went unmentioned.
Daily Trust headlines featuring the phrase “Farmer Herder Clash” are a staple in its pages. Some of these report veritable clashes between armed famers and armed herders, such a faceoff between the two on July 29 in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.
Yet, an evident bias in favor of the herders is present in many stories. A Jan 6, 2014 story follows the narrative of the Zonal Chairman of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, who explains without specificity that a day after police attempted to arrest three herders, other herders returned and murdered three local farmers. The story gives no account of an actual clash.
A Daily Clash Story of Oct 26 2021 relates a reprisal by Fulani herders after the killing of 13 cows by “unknown gunmen.” A short time later the herders killed four and injured three local people, whose full names suggest they were all Christians. There were no casualties among the Fulani, who typically carry assault rifles.
Leadership Newspaper, headquartered in the North, typically refers to attackers as “bandits,” “foreign herders,” or “terrorists,” without linking them to ethnic identity. Headlines such as “Foreign Herders Behind Attacks in Benue, Plateau” or “Terrorists Infiltrating Benue, Plateau” provide an alibi for the government by deflecting blame on criminals from neighboring nations. Or else, Leadership publishes uncritically the inane explanation from a defense spokesman who says the murders can be traced to a “cash crunch.”
Southern newspapers show a more varied approach. In April 2025, Vanguard reported statements from the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum describing the violence as “planned, coordinated, and unrelenting genocidal massacres by Fulani militias.”
Punch has taken a more restrained tone. Although it quoted accusations of genocide in July 2025, it continued to label the conflict a “herder-farmer crisis.” Earlier in the year, Punch published that attacks had “drastically reduced,” attributing the change to improved dialogue.
Premium Times has stopped short of labeling the violence as genocide but has featured expert commentary, eyewitness accounts, and official testimonies that support such an interpretation.
Why the Silence?
David Onyilokwu Idah Director International Human Rights Commission in Abuja has raised serious concerns about the persistent reluctance of Nigerian media outlets to accurately label the ongoing violence in the Middle Belt as terrorism, genocide, or ethnic cleansing. Idah identified a complex web of political, institutional, and personal risks faced by journalists reporting on Fulani militia attacks.
“The reluctance of Nigerian media to call the violence by its name can be traced to several overlapping pressures,” Idah told TruthNigeria.
He first pointed to the political structure of the country and the sensitivity surrounding Fulani leadership in government.
“With Fulani elites occupying many key positions of power—both elected and appointed—media houses risk backlash, loss of access, or outright censorship if their coverage appears too critical,” he noted.
Role of Media Ownership
“Many Nigerian media outlets are owned or heavily influenced by politically connected individuals from the North. These owners often shape editorial policies in ways that avoid implicating Fulani groups,” Idah told TruthNigeria.
The personal safety of journalists is another major factor behind the silence.
“Journalists genuinely fear being attacked, threatened, or ostracized for explicitly linking the violence to Fulani groups. It’s not just professional risk—it’s life and death in some cases,” he said.
Geographical and security challenges of reporting from conflict zones further compound the problem, Idah went on to say.
“Covering remote or volatile areas means risking detention, harassment, violence—or even death. Many reporters simply cannot afford to take those risks,” Idah said.
Idah also criticized the government’s narrative control, which often downplays the ethnic and religious dimensions of the violence.
“Successive administrations have consistently framed the crisis as either communal clashes or resource-based conflicts. This discourages media outlets from using terms like ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘terrorism,’” he said.
The Numbers: A Crisis Beyond Comprehension
The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) reports that between October 2019 and September 2024, Fulani Ethnic Militia were responsible for more than 16,900 civilian deaths—constituting 47 percent of all civilian killings in that period.
In contrast, Boko Haram and ISWAP were responsible for only 11 percent.
In affected areas, Christians were killed at a rate 5.2 times higher than Muslims. This number is virtually never reported by mainstream Nigerian media.
ORFA also recorded 13,437 violent incidents and 29,180 abductions—including 1,665 in 2020 and 7,648 in 2024.
According to the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, by the end of 2024, 3.4 million Nigerians had been displaced—many from Middle Belt states.
The Lethal Cost of Euphemisms
The Middle Belt is bleeding. Yet the refusal of major Nigerian media houses to name this crisis for what it truly is—a targeted, systematic ethno-religious cleansing—has helped shield perpetrators, mislead the nation, and stall international action.
Until the truth is boldly told, Nigeria’s war will remain unseen—not due to a lack of victims, but because too many in power prefer silence.
Mike Odeh James is a Kaduna-based conflict reporter for TruthNigeria.
