Middle Belt leaders and emerging Hausa activists explore unprecedented security and political cooperation amid rising Fulani militia violence.
By Luka Binniyat
(Kaduna) – A potentially important political realignment is beginning to emerge in Northern Nigeria ahead of the Nigerian general elections slated for February 2027, TruthNigeria has learned.
Sections of the Hausa Muslim population are increasingly asserting an identity distinct from the traditional “Hausa-Fulani” Muslim political establishment.
Meanwhile the Middle Belt Forum (MBF) – made up of hundreds of ethnic nationalities that are largely Christian – is openly exploring closer cooperation with Hausa Muslim communities.
A security summit is being planned between the Hausa ethnic group and the ethnic nationalities of the Middle Belt at a yet-to-be-disclosed date, as announced by the MBF and reported by ThisDay Newspaper in July 2026.
This is a significant development given that the ethnic nationalities of the Middle Belt had regarded the Hausa Muslims as perennial foes for centuries.
“In the vocabulary of many Autochthonous communities of the Middle Belt,” noted Dr. Zwahu Bonnat, a retired lecturer in history with Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, “the word ‘slavery; compulsion and cruelty’ means ‘Hausa’,” he told TruthNigeria in Kaduna.
According to him, that has been how the Hausa have been viewed even from ancient times.
Old Foes Mending Fences Over a Common Threat
However, the violent raids of Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) against Hausa-dominant communities are changing the relationship between the Hausa and Fulani Muslims that have lived alongside one another for generations.
In colonial times, the Hausa were viewed by the Middle Belt tribes as the cruel overseers who collected taxes for Fulani Muslim chiefs, according to many scholars.
The rupture in the long-standing Hausa-Fulani political relationship has been attributed to years of terrorism in Hausa-majority communities, according to TruthNigeria. The relationship was “falling apart” following attacks by armed groups identified by the publication as Fulani bandits and militias.
A New Hausa Consciousness
According to political experts interviewed by TruthNigeria, the emerging Hausa movement is being driven by cultural activists, youth organisations, community defenders, historians and victim-advocacy groups.
Some thought leaders argue that the conventional Hausa-Fulani identity has historically obscured differences in political power between the two populations. It notes that British colonial indirect rule helped institutionalise existing emirate structures and that it contributed to the political consolidation of Hausa-Fulani elites over a much wider Northern Nigerian population known as the Middle Belt.
Middle Belt: the “Christian Belt” of Northern Nigeria.
But in April 2026, a Hausa activist group wrote to the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing Fulani gunmen of ethnic cleansing.
“For years, Hausa towns and villages have suffered from continuous, systematic attacks by armed Fulani bandits,” wrote the Hausa Native Advancement and Development Initiative.
“These attacks are not random or isolated. They are part of a calculated, ethnically targeted campaign that bears all the hallmarks of crimes against humanity—and possibly genocide,” the group alleged.
‘Entire communities have been uprooted,” the group said.
“Our people are forced to flee their ancestral homes, seeking refuge in makeshift camps without adequate food, water, or security.
“Our traditional rulers, community leaders, and clerics have been silenced or murdered.
“This is not mere banditry—it is ethnic cleansing, and it is being enabled by the silence and inaction of the Nigerian state,” the group alleged.
Enter the Middle Belt
The most consequential element of the story may be the emerging connection between the Hausa awakening and the Middle Belt.
In December 2025, MBF President Dr. Pogu Bitrus told TruthNigeria that Hausa groups were approaching the forum seeking “security and political partnership.” He added that the organisation was studying the proposals. Most significantly, he said: “the relationship between the Hausa and Fulani will never be the same again.”
Six months later, the idea appeared to have moved beyond exploratory conversations.
In June 2026, Daybreak Nigeria reported that the MBF was calling for stronger cooperation between Middle Belt communities and Hausa-speaking areas.
The forum specifically identified security, economic development and political participation as areas for cooperation and said it intended to consult stakeholders towards a Security and Political Summit before 2027.
Political observers have described the development as a significant step.
The December report described a possibility. The June report described an emerging programme of engagement.
Why the Alliance Matters
“The potential Hausa-Middle Belt relationship could reshape political calculations across Northern Nigeria if it develops into sustained institutional cooperation into the 2027 general elections,” said Prof. Emmanuel Musa, Head of Department of Sociology, Niger State University, Lapai, Niger State.
“Both communities have substantial populations and occupy strategically important territories,” he told TruthNigeria via phone from Minna, Wednesday.
“The violence suffered in the hands of Hausa and the people of the Middle Belt by violent Fulani non-state actors is driving the political space of Nigeria into a critical juncture,” he added.
“Recent studies suggest that Islam which has been the major magnet between the Fulani and the Hausa is fading in the face of the huge losses suffered by the Hausa from their fellow Muslim Fulani,” he added.
“The Christians of the Middle Belt are also facing destruction from Fulani armed groups what some scholars have come to describe it as genocide,” he added.
“So it makes strategic political, economic and security sense for the two victims to form a collaboration despite past ill feelings against one another,” he said.
But security alone may not sustain an alliance.The MBF’s June statement explicitly expanded the proposed cooperation into economic development and political participation. This suggests that the emerging relationship could become broader than a security pact.
The Kingdom of Power
Abdul Hassan Kure, a so-called national mobiliser known for the slogan, “Kwoto Kasan Hausa” (KKH) – Snatch Back Hausa Land – Hausa, said cooperation with Middle Belt groups is aimed at providing new political relationships with the aim of capturing power at all levels.
“Nkwame Nkrumah (Ghanaian first Prime Minister) once said, ‘give me the kingdom of power, and all other things shall be added unto me,’” he told TruthNigeria Nigeria in Kaduna.
All hands agree that if indeed the two groups form a formidable political alliance, the Fulani could be profoundly isolated and their political and social influence diminished.
Luka Binniyat writes for TruthNigeria on Politics and Conflict from Kaduna.
