ICC Note:

Predominantly Muslim, ethnic Fulani herdsman have waged yet another attack against a Christian community in Nigeria’s Benue state, burning down homes, businesses and churches and killing five Christians according to reports. A complicated conflict, Christians, mostly agriculturalists, and Fulani Muslims, mostly herdsmen, have been waging a lethal tit-for-tat turf war across Nigeria’s middle belt states; though, attacks like this that target and devastate Christian communities bring into question what motives are actually compelling these Muslims to, with the help of foreign Islamic mercenaries, drive Christians from their land. 

12/19/2014 Nigeria (Morning Star News) – Muslim Fulani herdsmen from Nasarawa state and Islamist mercenaries from outside Nigeria attacked villages in neighboring Benue state on Sunday (Dec. 14), killing five Christians, sources said.

Inhabited almost entirely by ethnic Idoma farmers, the Fulani herdsmen from Nasarawa state, with mercenaries from Chad and Niger, razed several villages, destroying homes and church buildings in the predominantly Roman Catholic Agatu Local Government Area and forcing hundreds of Christians to flee.

Area resident Sule Audu told Morning Star News in Makurdi, the capital of Benue state, that the attacks took place while Christians were in worship services.

“Several houses in communities like Adeka and Olegadeje villages were destroyed,” he said. “In addition, farmlands and properties were also destroyed in the renewed attacks.”

Since the beginning of the year, Christian communities in Agatu have been under attack from bands of armed Muslim Fulani herdsmen. Sunday Oyigadu, a Christian leader in the area, told Morning Star News that in the first six months of this year Muslim Fulani herdsmen attacked 61 Christian communities.

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