Unpacking the political complexities of the Benue killings in Nigeria

The ‘food basket of the nation,’ now has the most internally displaced persons in Nigeria

Originally published on Global Voices

By Jude Onuzurike

Benue state in Nigeria, a geographical entity situated in the volatile middle belt region intersecting the Muslim north and the larger Christian south, has become the epicenter of a religious and political crisis. While this crisis dates back decades, it has intensified since 2015 and entered a new, more violent era in recent months, posing an existential threat to the Indigenous people of Benue.

Violent attacks have become all too common, with over 10,000 people killed by armed groups since President Bola Tinubu took power in 2023. Benue has been the worst affected by these attacks, with over 7,000 deaths to date, according to reports by Amnesty International.

Some groups claim this violence is religiously motivated, with Open Doors, a Christian watchdog group, ranking Nigeria as the most violent country for Christians for eight consecutive years.

An attack in June 2025, now dubbed the Yelwata Massacre, marked a paradigm shift in the ongoing violence. The attack took place in the wee hours of the night, with over 200 Indigenous people killed in their sleep in the Yelwata community, prompting Pope Leo VI to weigh in, calling it a terrible massacre. The Pope’s remark drew international attention and spurred the Nigerian government — which had largely been ineffectual in curbing the violence — to address the matter.

Multifaceted nature of the crisis

Benue, dubbed the “food basket of the nation,” is predominantly inhabited by agricultural workers and plays a pivotal role in food production and distribution across Nigeria; however, it is now grappling with a large number of internally displaced persons and facing other security challenges. 

Much of the violence within Benue state is the result of armed Islamic groups expanding southward to the middle belt from the Sahel. These assailants are predominantly nomadic pastoral groups, known as Fulani herdsmen, who have been driven southward due to the climate crisis, which has dessicated grazing land and dried up water sources across the region.

This has compelled the Fulani herdsmen into an increasingly desperate search for arable land, bringing them into violent conflict with the sedentary farming communities of Benue and other middle-belt states. Yet these incursions are also shaped by long-standing political dynamics — and the Nigerian government’s notably restrained response to the violence has drawn widespread criticism from observers.

Benue is 98 percent Christian, leading many to infer the attacks were religiously motivated, but this oversimplifies the intricate political and multifaceted nature of this crisis.

On June 17, 2025, the then-Nigerian Chief of Defense Staff, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, during a press briefing, suggested that land disputes, indiscriminate cattle grazing, and animal rearing are the main causes of the Benue killings. Many Nigerians share these sentiments and attribute the massacres to a land-grab campaign disguised as a religious conflict.

The governor of Benue State, Hyacinth Alia, on the same day, reported that 17 out of 23 local government areas in Benue State are under siege, noting that federal intervention is helping to reduce that number. However, renewed attacks in 2026 in Agatu, Gwer West, and Guma local government areas suggest that officials have yet to reach a lasting solution. 

A week later, during a plenary session, Terseer Ugbor, a member of the Nigerian House of Representatives of Kwande/Ushongo Federal Constituency, raised the alarm that Fulani herdsmen have taken over 40 percent of the land in Benue state, displacing thousands of Indigenous people in the process. Despite the existential nature of these attacks, security responses have not been prompt or decisive, raising questions of culpability within the military ranks.

To defend themselves, Benue communities have had to take matters into their own hands, forming vigilante groups in an attempt to resist these incessant attacks. However, the vigilante groups are pitifully ill-equipped and severely disadvantaged because their assailants are in possession of sophisticated weapons and have the added advantage of secret information networks. This is a literal case of bringing a knife to a gunfight; hence, the community vigilante groups and, by extension, the Indigenous population are largely at the mercy of their assailants. 

The government’s response to recent attacks  

After the Pope’s appeals, Nigerian officials began to address the issue of violence in Benue. Three days after the Yelwata massacre, Nigeria’s President, alongside his service chiefs, paid a commiseration visit to Benue, where they were greeted with a strong address by James Ayatse, the paramount ruler of the Indigenous Tiv people, who emphasized the misinformation and misrepresentation of the security crisis in Benue state. He said: 

It is not herder/farmer clashes, it is not communal clashes, it is not reprisal attacks, or skirmishes. What we are dealing with here in Benue is a calculated, well planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land grabbing campaign by Herder terrorists and bandits, which has been ongoing for decades and is worsening every year.

The visit ended with the President questioning the Inspector General of Police on why arrests have not been made in the wake of the attack. He did not receive a coherent answer at the time. A few arrests were made in the days that followed, but as of the publication of this article, eight months after the attacks, none of the culprits had been tried or sentenced. 

This halfhearted reaction further indicates the disparity within the Nigerian jurisprudence. The evidence suggests that distinct ethnoreligious bias determines the level of enforcement and/or dissuasion of the law. This is not the first time the Abuja government has overlooked Central Nigeria. Benue state, by virtue of its geography and distinct ethnicities, is a minority and therefore considered politically expendable, leaving it at the mercy of larger ethnic groups with more political clout.

Hence, the strong dissonance between the people of Benue and the Fulani’s ongoing expansionist campaign. This is an underlying factor that has led to the seemingly unending killings in Benue. 

A fragile coexistence

Cases of the Nigerian government showing more sympathy for the herdsmen than the targeted populations are well-documented. For instance, the special adviser on media and publicity to the former president of Nigeria, Femi Adesina, said while addressing the press:

Villagers should willingly give up their ancestral lands for ranching because they can only have ancestral attachments if they are alive.

His press address was met with strong public disapproval, contributing to the declining reputation of the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. 

Moreover, before his rise to office, in what would steer further rounds of controversy, President Bola Tinubu also publicly stated that the absence of cattle at the scene of an attack absolves the Fulani herdsmen of any culpability.

These controversial positions, along with several other speeches in which key government officials seemed to victim-blame, have not only eroded trust between Benue communities and the Nigerian government but also raised questions about how various ethno-religious groups in Nigeria could possibly continue to coexist. They also strengthen claims of collusion between the government and other vested interests within the Nigerian political sphere. 

This sort of partisan rhetoric only increases tension in an already volatile sociopolitical landscape and encourages chaos rather than calm. It is exactly the rhetoric that consequential political figures should look to discourage, as that will only fuel the start of engendering a lasting solution to the senseless violence against the people of Benue.