Massacre in Benue state, Nigeria elicits rare response from president

Days after a massacre of more than 100 people in a predominantly Christian village in Benue state, Nigeria, the country’s president called for action against the assailants even as a local traditional ruler tried to correct him and others about the nature of such attacks.

With President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in attendance at a meeting in the state capital of Makurdi, the paramount ruler of the Tiv tribe, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, stated that attacks such as the June 13-14 massacre in Yelwata village were not the result of sectarian conflict.

“It’s not herders-farmers clashes, not communal clashes or reprisal attacks,” Ayatse said, according to outlet TruthNigeria. “It is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits.”

While some Muslim Fulani herdsmen still assert a claim on obsolete grazing routes of lands that have been owned for decades by predominantly Christian farmers, the cattlemen’s heavily armed assaults of the last several years on villages of largely weaponless farmers contradict the “herder-farmer clash” narrative still touted by Tinubu and Nigerian academics and parroted by officials of foreign governments and Non-Governmental Organizations.

“Wrong diagnosis will always lead to wrong treatment – this is war,” Ayatse said, saying that for decades herdsmen have launched unprovoked attacks on the largely defenseless Tiv and Idoma peoples.

While not visiting the devastated Yelwata people, Tinubu told security officials at the Benue Government House in Makurdi to “get those criminals out.”

“How come no arrest has been made?” Tinubu asked Inspector-General Kayode Egbetokun, according to TruthNigeria. “I expect there should be an arrest of those criminals.”

Tinubu demanded military and intelligence leaders carry coordinate a resolute effort to curb the violence.

“Christopher (the Chief of Defence Staff), you can’t be tired of staying in the bush,” Tinubu reportedly said. “Oloyede, Air Marshal, DG NIA, DG SSS – retool your information channels and bring tangible intelligence. Let’s get those criminals.”

The pep talk was little consolation to survivors in Yelwata, where mostly women and children were slain in the June 13-14 attack by what advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) described as “militia of Fulani ethnicity.”

“Some reports indicate that the final death toll could be as a high as 200,” a CSW press statement read. “CSW sources report that the terrorists initially targeted the Yelewata mission site, which shelters over 400 internally displaced persons (IDPs), at approximately 10 p.m. on 13 June but were repelled by military personnel. The assailants subsequently attacked the Yelewata Main Market, setting buildings on fire and mutilating and burning the bodies of victims, some of whom were trapped in their homes.”

The assailants chanted the jihadist slogan, “Allahu Akbar [God is greater]” in the attack, which followed several days of terrorist violence in Guma County, where Yelwata is located.

“On 8 June two farmers were killed and a third was seriously wounded when they were fired upon whilst working in their fields in Udei in the Nyiev Council Ward,” CSW stated. “On 11 June two people were killed in a machete attack in Tse Ivokor, Unongu, and the following day five people were killed in an ambush on farmlands in Daudu as they were searching for the bodies of those who had been killed in the previous day’s attack.”

A search party of four people was also killed on June 13 in Daudu, while five others were killed and eight were injured in an attack on the Akondutough community in North Bank in the neighboring Makurdi County, according to CSW.

From April 1 to 1 June, 270 people were reportedly killed in Benue state, and the Benue NGOs Network estimates that over 5,700 lives have been lost to terrorist violence in the state since 2011, with more than 150,000 people displaced, CSW stated. More than 6,500 people were reportedly displaced in a single wave of violence in June, it added.

In light of the Yelwata massacre, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reiterated its call for the U.S. Department of State to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) for tolerating or promoting egregious violations of religious rights.

“The abhorrent violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt and the systematic, ongoing, and egregious attacks throughout Nigeria against Christians and Muslims are indications that government prevention efforts are failing and not protecting vulnerable religious communities,” Chair Vicky Hartzler said. “U.S. government foreign assistance to Nigeria should efficiently and effectively support efforts to protect religious freedom.”

Commissioner Mohamed Elsanousi said further efforts are needed to reduce violence and preserve freedom of religion or belief for all Nigerians.

“The U.S. government should use foreign assistance to address conflict resolution and enhance security sector training so vulnerable religious communities can be better protected,” Elsanousi said.

The suspected herdsmen in the Yelwata attack came from different directions at the same time, shooting sporadically, a resident told the AP. They also destroyed a year’s worth of harvest of staple foods, he said.

The assailants targeted displaced families, set fire to buildings as they slept and attacked with machetes anyone who tried to flee, according to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.

“The IDP families were in buildings repurposed as temporary accommodation in the market square in Yelewata, in Guma Local Government Area, near Makurdi, when militants stormed in, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ before killing people at will,” an ACN report stated. “Local clergy said that earlier the same evening, police had repelled the attackers as they tried to storm Yelewata’s St. Joseph’s Church, where up to 700 IDPs lay sleeping. But then, the militants made for the town’s market square, where they reportedly used fuel to set fire to the doors of the displaced people’s accommodation, before opening fire in an area where more than 500 people were asleep.”

Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.

“They adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.

Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.

Nigeria remained among the most dangerous places on earth for Christians, according to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. Of the 4,476 Christians killed for their faith worldwide during the reporting period, 3,100 (69 percent) were in Nigeria, according to the WWL.

“The measure of anti-Christian violence in the country is already at the maximum possible under World Watch List methodology,” the report stated.

In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report. Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.

The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.

Nigeria ranked seventh on the 2025 WWL list of the 50 worst countries for Christians.