February 2017 Persecution Magazine (3 of 4)

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THE FULANI
PLAGUE
When the Fulani attacks first began, many saw
them as farming and herding disputes between
neighbors, but as their armory increases and
their attacks grow in number, the narrative is
shifting to one of jihad and religious targeting.
By Sandra Elliot
Fulani nomads herd their
flock through the brush in
central Nigeria. Though not
all Fulanis are part of militias,
as attacks on Christian
farming villages continue
and raiding parties gain
better arms, the death toll
continues to grow. Flickr
Creative Commons image
by user Rita Willaert.
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NIGERIA
GTI RANK 3
GTI SCORE 9.213
ATTACKS BY TARGET
Private citizens & property
Military, militia or terrorist groups
Religious
Business
Other
DEATHS BY GROUP
Boko Haram
Unknown
Fulani militants
Other
In 2014 Nigeria experienced the biggest yearly deterioration in
terrorism on record. There were 5,662 more people killed from
terrorism in 2014 than in 2013, an increase of almost 300 per cent.
This is largely due to the increasing ruthlessness of Boko Haram,
an Islamist terrorist group based in north-east Nigeria.
Boko Haram was the world’s deadliest terrorist group in 2014
killing 6,118 people in Nigeria through terrorist attacks. In 2013
Boko Haram had killed 1,595 people. Despite this very large
increase in deaths, the proportion of the total deaths that Boko
Haram was responsible for fell slightly. In 2013 Boko Haram was
responsible for 86 per cent of deaths in Nigeria, whereas in 2014
they were responsible for 81 per cent.
The reason for this change is the Fulani militants who killed 1,229
people in 2014, up from 63 in 2013. They now pose a serious threat
to stability. There has been an ongoing conflict over access and
control of land between the semi-nomadic Fulani herdsmen and
farmers in north-eastern Nigeria. There have been reports of a link
between Boko Haram and Fulani militants, 63 particularly in regards
to smuggling and organised crime. However, unlike Boko Haram
who are now affiliated with ISIL and align with Deaths
the establishment
of a caliphate, the Fulani militants have very localised goals,
mainly greater access to grazing lands for livestock.
In Nigeria private citizens are overwhelmingly targeted, most often
with firearms resulting in very high levels of deaths per attack. In
2014 Boko Fulani Haram killed militants on average 15 people were per responsible
attack whereas
Fulani militants killed eight per attack.
INCIDENTS
662
DEAD
INCREASE IN DEATHS SINCE 2000
2000
7,512
MAJOR ATTACK
PROPERTY
DAMAGE
1,512
INJURED
7,512
Most terrorist attacks were in the northeast of Nigeria where
Boko Haram is based, with 40 per cent of attacks in their home
state of Borno. The most attacks were seen in Maiduguri, the
regional capital of Borno State, and Kano in northern Nigeria
which is the second largest city in Nigeria. There were 146
cities that had at least ten people killed from terrorist attacks
in 2014 and 19 cities that had at least 100 people killed. The
two areas with the most deaths from terrorism were Konduga
with 444 and Maiduguri with 431 deaths. Konduga is a
community in Borno State with a population of less than
20,000. Konduga served as a minor base for Boko Haram
members which led to government forces clashing with Boko
Haram members in early 2015.
The nature of terrorism in Nigeria is different to Iraq and
Afghanistan. Terrorist activity in Nigeria has more in
common with the tactics of organised crime and gangs,
focusing more on armed assaults using firearms and knives
than on the bombings of other 1,229
large terrorist groups.
Firearms were used in over half of all attacks in Nigeria and
were responsible for 67 per cent Deaths
of all deaths by Boko Haram
and 92 per cent of deaths from Fulani militants.
Whilst previously the use of suicide attacks by Boko Haram was
rare, in 2014 they were responsible for 31 suicide attacks with an
average of nearly 15 deaths per attack. The majority of these
Fulani attacks were militants against private were citizens responsible
and education and religious
institutions. No other group in conducted suicide attacks
for 1229 deaths in Nigeria in 2014.
in 2014.
GLOBAL TERRORISM INDEX 2015 | Results
*Data gathered from Global Terrorism Index, 2015, p. 22, 43-44
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2014
2,246
+7,492
WORST ATTACK
An attack at a mosque killed 122
people and injured 270 when Boko
Haram set off explosives and shot at
worshippers fleeing.
Nigeria spread in the Institute for Economics & Peace’s 2015 Global Terrorism
Index Report, page 22. Nigeria experienced a sharp increase in terror-related
deaths and an extremely high rate of targeting civilians in 2014.
Focus on Fulani Militants *
In 2013: In 2014:
for 63 deaths in Nigeria in 2013.
= 25 People
That is almost a 2000% increase
92% Civilian Attacks
81% Civilian Deaths
In 2014, Fulani militants overwhelmingly targeted private civilians
and not security forces. Civilian targets accounted for 92 percent of
Fulani attacks and 81 percent of Fulani victims – one of the highest
civilian target rates by any terror group in the world.
The annual cycle of a
family farm has been
the same for millennia
and is the same the
world over; plant and
plow, reap and sow.
Nigeria’s Christian
farmers formerly lived
under the simple discipline
of this annual
cycle until 15 years ago when they started to
regularly face the storms of attacks by Fulani
Islamist militias that are attempting to cleanse
the land of Christians by burning their crops
and homes and slaughtering their families.
“They came upon us suddenly,” a survivor
told ICC, “I struggled with the attackers to
escape from my house. I was fleeing with my
children when the bullets hit me.”
When Fulani militants raid a village, they
usually do so at night, armed with machetes
and heavy firearms, murdering anyone in their
path and leaving whole towns ablaze.
The Fulani militants are a Muslim tribe that
spans several African countries. They are a nomadic
people who go wherever their cattle can find
feeding grounds, too often on Christian farms.
While Boko Haram grabs most of the
headlines in Nigeria, the Fulani were killing
Christians there for years before the existence
of Boko Haram. What is staggering is the
growth in deaths attributed to Fulani attacks
– from 63 people in 2013 to 1,229 in 2014
(Global Terrorism Index, 2015, p. 44).
The maddening part about the massive
number of attacks and deaths is that few outside
of Nigeria are even aware of the scale
of what’s happening. Even worse is the fact
that Nigeria hasn’t made serious headway in
protecting the Christian victims from Fulani
militant attacks.
Unfortunately, Nigeria’s armed forces are
controlled by Muslims and the government is
riddled with those protecting and even abetting
these terrorist groups.
22
February 21-24, 2016
In February of 2016, the Fulanis attacked
10 villages in Benue state, killing over 500.
The United Nation’s High Commissioner in
Nigeria, Angele Dikongue Atangana, said
at the time that it was the most destructive
attack she had seen in her more than 20 years
of experience.
Carrying their trademark AK-47 rifles, the
militants invaded the villages and farming
settlements, gunning down children, women,
men and elderly alike.
When aid groups and journalists arrived
on the scene, corpses littered the roads in
various stages of decomposition as the killings
3

Feature Article
Predominately Christian
farming communities in
the Middle Belt of Nigeria
remain in constant fear of
Fulani militias raiding and
killing in their villages. Flickr
Creative Commons image by
user Conflict & Development
at Texas A&M.
occurred at different times. After the assault,
when relatives of the deceased returned for
the bodies of their loved ones, they were often
ambushed and likewise slaughtered by the
Fulani militants.
Aside from the sheer magnitude of the attack,
the Benue massacre marked a turning point
for Fulani militant aggression. While previous
attacks by Fulanis were confined to the Middle
Belt regions of Nigeria, Benue is a southern
state. This was the first time that the terrorists
showed territorial expansion past central Nigeria.
Reverend Yunusa Nmadu, chairman of the
Kaduna Central District Church Council, told
ICC that they have seen a significant increase
in attacks from Fulani militants in 2016.
“In previous years, it was an average of [one]
attack in four months,” he said. “This year it has
become two attacks per week average.”
October 15, 2016
“It came to us like it was the end of life,”
Jummai Awuje, 65, told ICC, “The attackers
came upon us suddenly so we fled for our lives
carrying nothing…my husband was killed, his
brother who was our breadwinner was also
killed in the attack.”
Awuje escaped with her children and grandchildren,
running more than two kilometers
to the nearest hospital. They have nothing left
but the clothes on their back. Awuje was one
of the more fortunate survivors of the October
“We fled for our
lives carrying
nothing…my
husband was killed,
his brother who was
our breadwinner
was also killed.”
– JUMMAI AWUJE, FULANI AT-
TACK SURVIVOR
15 attack in Godogodo, Nigeria.
By the end of the assault, 40 Christians
had died. It took days before the dead could
be buried, as the Fulani militants stayed to
occupy farms and loot crops.
The attack in Godogodo was strategically
planned and timed. According to some in the
village, Muslim villagers conveniently left
their homes a day before the attack.
“There are Muslims and Fulanis in
Godogodo, but we discovered that they had
secretly informed them to move out ahead of
the attack,” one survivor told ICC.
Thousands were displaced following the
attack and are now living as internally displaced
people in their own country.
“My very pressing need is survival—food
for my family,” a survivor told ICC, “We
Christians are all scattered in different places.”
October 27, 2016
Two weeks after the Godogodo massacre,
Fulani militants killed another seven
Christians in four different villages. Pasakori,
Mile One, Misisi, and Tudn-Wadea in Kaduna
state were all attacked.
Southern Kaduna once maintained a longstanding
peace with the Fulani tribes, leading
many to wonder why such historical peace
should be disturbed for no apparent reason.
“The sudden turn of events where herdsmen
have taken up arms against their host communities
is giving us a serious cause for concern,”
read a statement from the Kaduna state elders
after the attack.
November 13, 2016
Within days, Fulani militants numbering
around 200 attacked four more villages in the
Kauru local area of Nigeria’s Kaduna state.
This time, 34 villagers were butchered, some
beyond recognition.
“We did mass burials today in two locations,”
an official of the Chawai Community
Development Association told ICC at the time.
“The attackers came over the hills, first in two
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Sokoto
Kebbi
Zamfara
Katsina
Kano
Jigawa
Yobe
Borno
Oyo
Ogun
Lagos
Niger
Kwara
Ekiti
Osun
Ondo
Edo
Delta
Abuja
Kogi
Kaduna
Nasarawa
Benue
Enugu
Ebonyi
Anambra
Cross
River
Abia
Imo
Bauchi
Plateau
Taraba
Gombe
Adamawa
Nigeria
Middle Belt region
Bayelsa
Rivers
Akwa
Ibom
Area of particular concern
States with major Fulani massacres
in 2016
groups, then converging into one, firing gun
shots and moving in on the cluster of villages.”
The Southern Kaduna People’s Union,
speaking on behalf of the people, urged the
Nigerian government to protect its citizens
from such butchery. One of the mass graves
held three generations of one family.
“It is now abundantly clear to even the worst
skeptics that southern Kaduna has become a
killing field, where genocide is taking place
unabated,” they wrote in a press statement.
A Narrative Shift
The Fulani militant incursion has brought a
new level of devastation to Christians living in
the Middle Belt of Nigeria. These blitzkrieg massacres
wipe out entire communities at a time and
create a manner of religious war in the country.
When the Fulani attacks first began, many
saw them as farming and herding disputes
between neighbors. But as their armory
increases and their attacks grow in number,
the narrative is shifting to one of jihad and
religious targeting.
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“This is an aggressive attack on peaceloving,
innocent natives,” Reverend Yunusa
Nmadu told ICC. “We hear that they appeal to
other Fulanis in other countries to come help
them persecute and ethnically cleanse and
fight to occupy.”
The jihadi narrative also comes from the obvious
connection between Boko Haram and the
Fulani terrorists. Where else could poor nomadic
herdsmen acquire military weapons and ammunition
on a large scale other than from the existing
terrorist network in Nigeria and elsewhere.
The difference is in their ambitions.
Boko Haram has political objectives and
works to indoctrinate fellow Nigerians to join
their cause via terrorism and territorial expansion.
Fulani militants are not aiming to indoctrinate
since they kill every man, woman and
child they encounter. Their actions are more
genocidal than oppressive.
Call to Prayer
The Nigerian Christian community in the
middle of the country is in massive pain. We
spoke with survivors of the recent attacks and
gathered prayer requests from them. We ask
you to pray and care for these brothers and
sisters in Nigeria.
“Pray that God will grant us peace in our
homeland so that we can return. Some are
heartbroken and need consolation and encouragement.”
–Rhoda, mother
“That God will help us to forgive the
attackers, and open doors for us to find help
and the means to take [care] of our families.”
–Bulus, father
“Pray for us that our hearts will be
calmed down so that we can forgive. Pray
that God will restore us back to our homes
and help us to return to normal life and survive.”
–Elisabatu, grandmother
“That God will grant us peace, restore us to
our homes and keep away this kind of evil from
happening again.” –Jummai, grandmother
“Pray for the pool of orphans that are being
created for us as a result of the attacks. We
don’t know what to do. That God will provide
for the Church so as to help victims.”
–Reverend Yanusa Nmadu.
5

Feature Article
From Mourning to Joy:
Chibok Girls Restored to
Their Families
By Ashley Shay
Imagine the anguish you would
feel, agonizing over whether or
not you would ever hold your kidnapped
daughter in your arms again.
Hundreds of parents experienced
this unimaginable pain on April 14,
2014, when their daughters were
abducted by militant jihadists. In a
single day, Boko Haram snatched
276 girls from their beds at a government
secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria,
and promised to sell them as wives to their
militants. A number of the parents initially
pursued the Islamists in an attempt to rescue
their daughters, but returned empty-handed,
forced to wait almost two years before hearing
a word about their fate. Though few
could ever conceive of the pain of that kind
of uncertainty, countless people around the
world joined these parents in crying out to
God for the safe return of the Chibok girls.
Finally, after more than 900 days, mourning
turned into joy for almost two dozen families.
On October 13, 2016, Boko Haram released
21 of the kidnapped girls into the hands of
the Nigerian government in negotiations brokered
by the International Committee of the
Red Cross and the Swiss government. Within
a few short days, elated parents had their
daughters back in their arms – no doubt held
tighter than ever.
A ceremony in the Nigerian capital of Abuja
to formally reunite the families revealed the
miraculous nature of the girls’ survival and
newfound freedom.
“We never imagined that we would see this
day, but, with the help of God, we were able
to come out of enslavement,” said one of the
girls. Another student, according to a BBC
report, shared how she and her peers were
forced to survive without food for 40 days.
She escaped unharmed when a plane dropped
a bomb near her location in the woods.
“We thank God. I never thought I was going
to see my daughter again, but here she is,”
a parent told the BBC. “Those who are still
out there – may God bring them back to be
reunited with their parents.”
Of the 276 Chibok girls who were kidnapped,
57 escaped within the first few days,
but 218 remained in captivity until a vigilante
group found and rescued Amina Ali Nkeki
(opposite top) on May 17, 2016. Her rescue
came a month after the release of a Boko
Haram video meant to establish “proof of life”
for at least 15 of the missing girls. Though its
date and location proved impossible to determine,
the video, coupled shortly thereafter
with Nkeki’s rescue, was the first real glimmer
of hope for families who had begun to
fear the worst.
Sources said Nkeki was discovered carrying
a four-month-old baby, presumably
her child with the Boko Haram fighter who
“Those who are
still out there –
may God bring
them back to be
reunited with
their parents.”
– A CHIBOK PARENT
traveled with her and claimed to be her
husband. Nkeki’s husband was arrested, and
she was briefly reunited with her parents.
She reportedly told her mother, “Wipe your
tears. God has made it possible for us to see
each other again.”
In addition to being the first of the Chibok
girls freed, Nkeki brought greater hope to the
parents of her fellow students when she told
authorities that all of the girls were still in the
Sambisa Forest, where she had been found,
with the exception of six who had died.
Three months later, on August 14, 2016,
Boko Haram produced another video alleging
proof of life for approximately 50 girls
and demanding the release of their fighters
in return for the girls. In September, a second
video sparked outrage when the terrorist
group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, mocked
the “Bring Back Our Girls” movement that
helped raise so much global awareness for
the girls, saying, “There’s still more to do [to]
‘Bring Back Our Girls.’ …If you want your
girls, bring back our brethren.”
The families of the girls seen on the video
and other supporters rallied the Nigerian government
to take decisive action to rescue their
daughters. However, details of the negotiations
that eventually did lead to the release of
the 21 a month later are being kept confidential.
Some sources have reported that Boko
Haram militants were released in exchange
for the girls, while others suggest that a large
sum of money was paid. The Nigerian government
is denying both claims, but notes that
they see this release as a positive “first step”
in the eventual release of all the Chibok girls.
In November, another one of the abducted
schoolgirls was reunited with her family
after Nigerian soldiers discovered her and her
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The 21 Girls
Released on 10/13/16
Amina Ali Nkeki was
was rescued on May
17, 2016. Nigeria
Military image.
The kidnapping of
the Chibok girls started
a worldwide social
media movement:
#BringBackOurGirls.
Wikimedia image.
On October 13,
2016, Boko Haram
released 21 of the
Chibok girls after
more than 900 days
in captivity.
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1. Mary Usman Bulama
2. Jummai John
3. Blessing Abana
4. Lugwa Sanda
5. Comfort Habila
6. Maryam Basheer
7. Comfort Amos
8. Glory Mainta
9. Saratu Emannuel
10. Deborah Ja’afaru
11. Rahab Ibrahim
12. Helen Musa
13. Maryamu Lawan
14. Rebecca Ibrahim
15. Asabe Goni
16. Deborah Andrawus
17. Agnes Gapani
18. Saratu Markus
19. Glory Dama
20. Pindah Nuhu
21. Rebecca Mallam
10-month-old son during a screening of escapees
from Boko Haram’s base in the Sambisa
Forest. According to ICC’s partners in Nigeria,
the girl is Maryam Ali Maiyanga, who was a
student leader in the school where the girls were
kidnapped. She was abducted with her sister,
but her sister is unfortunately believed to be
among the 195 girls still in captivity.
As we rejoice with the families of the 22
young girls who have been restored to their
families and rescued from a life of unthinkable
horrors, we must remember those whose
parents’ agony did not end in October, as
well as all of the Christians who live in fear
that their children may be taken or that they
may lose their own lives. Weeks before Boko
Haram released the 21 students, their insurgents
attacked Christian villages in the Chibok
area two weeks in a row – killing eight during
the first week and two the following.
Please continue to pray for our suffering
brothers and sisters in Nigeria.
7

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Black scorch marks
cover a door of what
was once a church
in Qeraqosh, Iraq
that ISIS burned as
they were forced out.
Keep Iraqi Christians
in prayer during and
after the battle for
Mosul, Iraq.
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