Fulani Militias Massacre with Impunity but Underneath AFRICOM’s Radar
By Mike Odeh James
(Abuja) Across Nigeria’s Middle Belt, armed militias burn villages, destroy churches and force thousands of Christians into displacement camps. Yet many local leaders say the crisis receives far less international attention than the jihadist insurgencies (Boko Haram and ISWAP) in Nigeria’s northeast.
Across Benue, Plateau, Taraba and southern Kaduna, the pattern has become grimly familiar: night attacks, burned homes, abandoned farms and families fleeing into overcrowded displacement camps.
While the United States continues counter-terrorism cooperation with Nigeria against groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), community leaders in the Middle Belt say another armed threat—Fulani ethnic militias—has expanded with far less global scrutiny.
For many residents, that perceived indifference has become a growing source of frustration.
A Deadly Pattern
Nigeria’s Middle Belt has increasingly become the epicenter of violence blamed on armed militias targeting rural farming communities.
According to a report by Amnesty International, nearly 6,896 people were killed in Benue State between May 2023 and May 2025 in violence linked to militia attacks and communal conflicts.
Independent journalists and civil-society monitoring groups say the real number may be significantly higher because many rural communities remain isolated and attacks often go unreported.
“The activities of Fulani ethnic militia groups across Nigeria, especially in the Middle Belt, have displaced more Christians and impoverished more Christian communities than Boko Haram, ISWAP and Ansaru combined,” said Rev. Samson Albert Magai of International Family Worship Centre in Kaduna in an interview with TruthNigeria.
“The people rendered homeless by Fulani militia attacks in Benue alone are about three million. Over 500,000 hectares of farmland have been destroyed, while thousands of Christian lives have been lost,” Magai added.
Church leaders and community advocates say the violence has quietly evolved into one of Africa’s largest yet least acknowledged humanitarian crises.
Tracking the Violence
Human-rights researchers say the scale of the conflict becomes clearer when individual attacks are compiled across different states.
Fulani ethnic militias remain among the deadliest threats to civilians in Nigeria today, said David Onyilokwu Idah of the National Human Rights Commission in Abuja in an interview with TruthNigeria.
Although no comprehensive national death toll exists for 2025–2026, Idah cited several verified attacks across the Middle Belt.
More than 150 people were killed in Yelewata, Benue in June 2025, according to a Reuters report.
At least 42 people were killed in another attack in Benue State in May 2025, according to reporting by The Guardian.
“Underreporting remains a serious problem because most of the affected communities are remote,” Idah said. “Databases such as the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) provide the most consistent conflict monitoring data.”
Security analysts say militia violence has become one of the most significant drivers of organized political violence in Nigeria in recent years.
“I don’t think Washington is forgetting about the Fulani militias,” said Scott Morgan, an independent African conflict security consultant in Washington, D.C., in an interview with TruthNigeria.
“That legal framework is the main reason those groups are targeted,” Morgan said, explaining that U.S. counter-terrorism operations are largely shaped by congressional authorizations targeting groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Morgan added that another factor may be limited reporting reaching policymakers in Washington.
“The U.S. Embassy hasn’t been sending sufficient reporting back to Washington about the scale of Fulani militia activity,” he said.
Strategic Consequences
Security analysts warn that ignoring the crisis could have wider implications for regional stability.
“We already have about three million Christians who are internally displaced in Benue. In Taraba State, more than 350,000 Christians have also been displaced by Fulani terrorists,” said Adakole Adam of Adamson Security Consultancy Services in Takum in comments to TruthNigeria.
Conflict monitoring data suggests the militias have become one of Nigeria’s deadliest non-state armed actors.
According to conflict data compiled by the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), about 47 percent of the 36,056 civilian deaths recorded in Nigeria since 2019—roughly 17,000 fatalities—are attributed to Fulani militias.
That figure exceeds the toll attributed to Boko Haram and ISWAP combined.
Analysts caution that the real casualty numbers may be higher because many attacks occur in remote rural areas where monitoring is limited.
An Expanding Threat
Security experts warn that the violence is no longer confined to the Middle Belt.
“The same groups are moving toward Bauchi and Gombe states in the North-East where they are already carrying out kidnappings and killings,” Adam said.
Recent reporting has also documented Fulani militia violence expanding into parts of western Nigeria, including attacks in Kwara and Kogi states reported by TruthNigeria.
If the violence continues to spread, analysts warn the consequences could include greater displacement, expanding criminal networks and the emergence of additional militant groups.
“The effects will be more conflicts, more refugees, more crimes and more armed terror groups,” Adam said.
Unless the violence receives the same international attention given to jihadist insurgencies in Nigeria’s northeast, many community leaders warn the attacks will continue to spread—leaving more villages destroyed and more families displaced in a conflict the world still struggles to see.
Mike Odeh James is a conflict reporter for TruthNigeria.
