Nigeria’s spiralling rural violence heaps pressure on president

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

A recent wave of rural violence has killed hundreds in northern Nigeria and piled pressure on the country’s president, with simmering tensions in the region drawing the attention of US conservatives who claim Christians are being targeted.

More than 150 people have been killed and thousands displaced in two north-central Nigerian states in April in the deadliest month since December 2023, according to local authorities.

Authorities suspect animal herders have carried out the attacks, while Christian civilians and the country’s security forces were also separately targeted by a splinter group of Islamist Boko Haram militants in the north-east.

The attacks have intensified criticism of President Bola Tinubu, who narrowly won the 2023 election promising to crack down on the multiple security challenges that festered under the previous administration. But two years on, his policies have yet to yield notable improvements — particularly in the besieged villages of northern Nigeria.

“The president has done a few things right,” said Nnamdi Obasi, senior Nigeria adviser at the International Crisis Group, pointing to increased defence spending and his appointment of well-regarded security chiefs. “But that has not translated to better results on the ground.”

A statement provided by Tinubu’s office this week after he met security chiefs said he “directed an immediate and comprehensive overhaul of national security strategies”.

Nigeria has long struggled with militant and separatist violence, with the clashes in the states of Benue and Plateau the deadly resurgence of an ongoing decades-old conflict between itinerant cattle herders and sedentary farmers over land and water.

Largely driven by competition for ever-dwindling resources, it is complicated by religious undertones as many herders are Muslim and farmers Christian.

The religious dimension of the attacks is attracting unwanted attention.

US Republican congressman Chris Smith, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, has put forward a resolution urging President Donald Trump’s administration to redesignate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern’’, a list that includes nations judged to have violated religious freedoms such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Washington, has echoed that call. Senior fellow Nina Shea said at a hearing in March that “placing Nigeria on the US’s short list of the world’s most egregious religious freedom violators is warranted”.

There are no sanctions for countries on the list, although the US state department warns that “an economic measure generally must be imposed” when non-economic measures fail to work.

Trump designated Nigeria as a CPC in the waning days of his first term, a move that was reversed by Joe Biden in 2021. Nigeria’s foreign ministry has denied Christians are being targeted.

The crisis has been worsened by desertification and climate change, which are causing cattle herders to move into the country’s agricultural heartlands, according to Lagos-based research firm SBM, which says that a flood of weapons have turbocharged the violence.

“Conflicts in Nigeria don’t always begin with religious motives,” said Confidence MacHarry, senior security analyst at SBM Intelligence. “But once it turns into disagreement between ethnic groups, it very quickly involves religion.”

“It becomes easy to lose sight of the bigger picture,” MacHarry said, referring to the fight for resources.

Crisis Group’s Obasi said Tinubu’s efforts to improve security were hindered by understaffing in the police and military, equipment shortages and slow progress in reforms to promote ranching instead of nomadic grazing. “There is continuous inertia in Nigeria and a lack of action that are building up and we’re having explosive situations,” he added.

As well as criticism from abroad, Nigeria’s president faced backlash at home for being out of the country for three weeks on a visit to Paris and London while much of the crisis unfolded.

The Nigerian opposition denounced Tinubu, who is expected to run for a second term in 2027, for failing to cut short his trip abroad.

“President Bola Tinubu, incapable of solving Nigeria’s worsening insecurity, chooses instead to gallivant across Europe — governing Nigeria in absentia as if from a holiday perch,” Atiku Abubakar, who stood against Tinubu in the last election, wrote on X.