Communal conflicts in Nigeria

Communal conflicts in Nigeria
Map of the 36 States of Nigeria
Date 1998-present (18 years) Location Nigeria Status Ongoing
Belligerents
Christians	Muslims
Tiv and Tarok farmers	Fulani and Hausa herders
Casualties and losses
16,000+ people killed since 1998[1][2]

Communal conflicts in Nigeria^[3] can be divided into two broad categories:^[4]

• ethnic conflicts, attributed to actors primarily divided by cultural, ethnic, or religious communities and identities, such as instances of religious violence between Christian and Muslim communities
• herder-farmer conflicts, typically involving disputes over land and/or cattle between herders (in particular the Fulani or Hausa) and farmers (in particular the Tiv or Tarok)

The most impacted states are those of the Nigerian Middle Belt like Benue, Taraba and Plateau.^[5]
Violence has reached two peaks in 2004 and 2011 with around 2,000 fatalities those years.^[6] It resulted in more than 700 fatalities in 2015.^[2]

Herder-farmer conflicts

Since the Fourth Nigerian Republic’s founding in 1999, farmer-herder violence has killed thousands of people and displaced tens of thousands more. It followed a trend in the increase of farmer-herder conflicts throughout much of the western Sahel, due to an expansion of agriculturist population and cultivated land at the expense of pasturelands; deteriorating environmental conditions, desertification and soil degradation; breakdown in traditional conflict resolution mechanisms of land and water disputes; and proliferation of small arms and crime in rural areas.^[7] Insecurity and violence have led many populations to create self-defence forces and ethnic militias, which have engaged in further violence. The majority of farmer-herder clashes have occurred between Muslim Fulani herdsmen and Christian peasants, exacerbating ethnoreligious hostilities.^[8] These conflicts between ever more sophistically armed groups claimed hundreds of lives in 2016.^[9]

According to the Global Terrorism Index, Fulani militants were the fourth deadliest terrorist group in 2014, using machine guns and attacks on villages to assault and intimidate farmers. After killing around 80 people in total from 2010 to 2013, they killed 1,229 in 2014. Most deaths occurred in the Nigerian Middle Belt, in particular in the states of Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba, which recorded 847 deaths. The state of Zamfara, in the northern belt, recorded 229 deaths. In addition to terrorist attacks, Fulani militants were also involved in non-state armed conflicts with groups from Eggon, Jukun and Tiv farming communities. These conflicts resulted in 712 deaths.^[10]

Other examples

Additional instances of ethnic violence in Nigeria exist; these are often urban riots or such, for example the Yoruba-Hausa disturbances in Lagos,^[11][12] the Igbo massacre of 1966 or the clashes between the Itsekiri and the Ijaw in Delta state. Others are land disputes between neighbours, such as clashes between Ile-Ife and Modakeke in the late 1990s^[13] and in Ebonyi State in 2011.^[14]

See also

References

Suggested reading

• Maier, Karl (December 18, 2002). This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis (illustrated, reprint ed.). Basic Books. ISBN 9780813340456. 

External links

• Communal conflicts in Nigeria
• Nigeria Security Tracker
• ACLED Data
• Stop this massacre, Agatu Community begs NSA, IG