Farmer–Herder Conflict in Nigeria: The Background

Violence between farming and pastoralist communities is one of the deadliest patterns of conflict in Nigeria, concentrated in the middle belt but present across a much wider area.

It is also one of the most frequently misdescribed. This is what the published research records.

The documented drivers

Analysts consistently identify the following:

Competition for shrinking grazing land and water. Population growth and the expansion of cultivated land have reduced the grazing reserves and stock routes that pastoralists historically relied on. Many of those routes were formally gazetted decades ago and have since been built on or ploughed.

Southward migration driven by desertification. Advancing desertification in the far north and, separately, insecurity in the north-west have pushed pastoralist movement further south into areas with different land tenure practices and denser farming.

Anti–open grazing laws. Benue and Taraba, among others, enacted laws prohibiting open grazing. Supporters argue they protect farmland; critics argue they criminalise a livelihood without providing a viable alternative. Either way, they changed the legal position of a practice that had been customary.

Weak prosecution of reprisals. Where attacks are not investigated and prosecuted, communities organise their own protection and retaliation. This is the mechanism by which individual incidents become cycles.

Ethno-religious framing. Land disputes in the middle belt frequently map onto ethnic and religious lines — pastoralists predominantly Fulani and Muslim, farmers in the affected areas frequently Christian and from other ethnic groups. That framing intensifies the conflict and makes resolution harder, but researchers generally treat it as an amplifier rather than the root cause.

Cattle rustling, which has become an organised criminal enterprise in its own right and overlaps with banditry in the north-west.

What the casualty data shows

From the EU Agency for Asylum Country of Origin Information report, January 2026:

• At least 10,217 people killed in armed attacks across affected states between May 2023 and late May 2025 — Benue 6,896, Plateau 2,630. Note that this total covers all armed attacks in those states, not only farmer–herder incidents.
• Incidents specifically classified as herder–farmer: 567 fatalities in 2024, down from 860 in 2023 — followed by a resurgence in the second quarter of 2025, with over 150 deaths in Benue and several mass-casualty incidents in Plateau.

Most affected states: Benue and Plateau in the north-central zone; Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara in the north-west; Edo and Delta; plus the FCT and Kaduna.

Human Rights Watch recorded two incidents from 2025 in detail: Bokkos local government area, Plateau, April 2025 — 52 killed and nearly 2,000 displaced; and Yelewata, Benue, June 2025 — an official toll of 59, with residents alleging over 100. Fifty-three suspects were arrested, 26 of them linked to Yelewata.

We could not obtain verified calendar-2026 casualty totals for the middle belt.

Why the framing matters

Describing this as a religious conflict, or as an ethnic one, has practical consequences. It makes local mediation harder, it invites outside actors with their own agendas, and it obscures the land and water questions that any durable settlement has to answer.

That is not an argument for pretending the ethnic and religious dimension does not exist. It plainly does, and communities experience it that way. It is an argument for being precise about what is cause and what is consequence.

What has been proposed

Ranching and grazing reserve schemes, state-level anti–open grazing legislation, livestock development programmes, security deployments, and community mediation initiatives.

The federal government established a Ministry of Livestock Development as a policy response. We could not verify its current status or that of the National Livestock Growth Plan, and have therefore not described either in detail.

The underlying difficulty is that a genuine solution requires either securing pastoralist access to land and water, or providing a viable transition out of open grazing — and both are expensive, slow, and politically costly in states where the affected communities vote differently.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a religious conflict? The documented drivers are competition over land and water, displacement, and failures of prosecution. Ethnic and religious identity frequently aligns with the sides and intensifies the violence, but researchers generally do not treat it as the root cause.

Is open grazing illegal in Nigeria? Not nationally. Several states, including Benue and Taraba, have enacted anti–open grazing laws. It is a state-by-state position.

Which states are worst affected? On the EUAA data, Benue and Plateau record the highest fatality figures.

Sources

• Casualty data, drivers and affected states — EUAA, Nigeria: Security Situation, intercommunal conflicts chapter
• Bokkos and Yelewata incidents — Human Rights Watch World Report 2026