Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi, Benue state, Nigeria, testified of Fulani atrocities before a U.S. House panel on March 12, 2025. (Christian Daily International-Morning Star News screenshot from YouTube)

ABUJA, Nigeria (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – Fulani attacks on predominantly Christian areas of Benue state, Nigeria have killed dozens of Christians since March 28, area sources said.

In Otobi village, Otukpo County, herdsmen on the evening of April 5 forced thousands of residents to flee as the assailants killed three Christians and kidnapped dozens of others, said Peter Ochekpa.

“The attack occurred at night, as the herdsmen invaded the community and shot indiscriminately at the villagers who had already gone to sleep in their houses,” Ochekpa told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “This incident has forced villagers to flee in different directions into the bushes.”

Angbo Kennedy, a parliamentarian representing the area in the Benue State House of Assembly, said herdsmen have recently attacked other communities, including Okpomaju, Okete and Asa settlements in Otukpo County.

“These herdsmen attacks are becoming too common and frequently,” Kennedy told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News.

On April 3, herdsmen attacked residents on the outskirts of Otukpo town, killing two Christians and kidnapping 13 others, said area resident Johnson Daniel. A resident of Olena village in the Asa area, Agnes Oguche, said herdsmen killed many other Christians in attacks there from March 28 to March 31.

“Olena community was under siege for four days, beginning from Friday, 28 March to Monday, 31 March, with dozens of Christians killed and many other Christians abducted,” Oguche told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News.

Maxwell Ogiri, chairman of the Otukpo Local Government Council, said the council had compiled detailed reports on these attacks and sent them to Benue state officials and security agencies.

“We are hopeful that measures will be taken in order to nip in the bud these recurring attacks,” Ogiri told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News.

Edwin Ochia, president of an association of Nigerian Christians living in diaspora in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Europe, denounced ongoing herdsmen violence in the Otukpo area and other areas of Benue state.

“We in the diaspora condemn in strong terms the deafening silence of Nigeria’s political leaders and security agencies over the ongoing bloodshed in Otukpo and other parts of Benue state,” Ochia said in a press statement. “It is outrageous that while innocent citizens are being slaughtered and entire villages sacked, those entrusted with the responsibility of protecting lives and property continue to look the other way.”

The perpetrators of these crimes are known, yet security agencies that should be actively pursuing them are turning a blind eye, he said.

“This negligence is nothing short of complicity,” Ochia said. “This reckless indifference from the highest levels of government is unacceptable and an insult to the victims and their grieving families. The Nigerian security agencies must wake up from their slumber. Their failure to investigate, apprehend and neutralize those responsible for these killings is a dereliction of duty.”

Catherine Anene, spokesperson for the Benue State Police Command, told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News, “Police officers have been deployed to the affected areas and operation is ongoing in Otukpo.”

A Christian ministry to persecuted Christians in Nigeria, the Lay Faithful Trust Foundation, stated that Fulani herdsmen launched an unprovoked assault on the predominantly Christian community of Umogidi Itekpa last year.

“The attacks follow a repeated pattern by the Fulani militia against the indigenous Christian ethnic nationalities in Benue state,” said the group’s Bosun Emmanuel in a press statement. “This assault left 34 people dead and four in intensive treatment from fatal wounds. At the same time, over 130 houses were either burnt or vandalized. As the dust settled from the latest barbaric attack by the Fulanis, 30 wives realized their husbands were no more. They were widows.”

Isaac Ikpa of the Benue stated-based Center for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency (CESJET) expressed concern over the alarming rise in herdsmen attacks in the state. Calling the response of the Nigerian government to incessant attacks by herdsmen on Christians in the state inadequate, he cited violence in Otukpo and surrounding communities.

“Over the past few months, the region has witnessed a disturbing rise in violent incidents, including murders, kidnappings, vandalism and threats of further attacks,” Ikpa said in a press statement.

He cited the murder of Chief Onche Akatu and the abduction of two others from his residence in the Asa 2 area on March 31; the killing of five persons in Okpomoju community by suspected herdsmen earlier this year; the murder  of Felicia Ochigbo in the Old NTA area on March 30; and the murder of a Benue Links driver and the kidnapping of 14 passengers onboard on April 3 in Itobi.

“These incidents are among many others that underline the urgent need for action,” Ikpa said. “These continuous attacks have created a climate of fear, paralyzed economic activities, and severely disrupted community life, with ripple effects on the national economy.”

Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, bishop of the Makurdi Diocese, testified before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 12, saying the violence is part of a long-term Islamic agenda to homogenize the population “through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population.”

“This strategy includes both violent and nonviolent actions such as the exclusion of Christians from positions of power,” Anagbe said. “The raping of women, the killing and expulsion of Christians, the destruction of churches and farmlands of Christian farmers followed by the occupation of such lands by the Fulani raiders, and also changing the names of these villages they’re taking over.”

Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.

“They adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.

Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.

Nigeria remained among the most dangerous places on earth for Christians, according to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. Of the 4,476 Christians killed for their faith worldwide during the reporting period, 3,100 (69 percent) were in Nigeria, according to the WWL.

“The measure of anti-Christian violence in the country is already at the maximum possible under World Watch List methodology,” the report stated.

In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report. Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.

The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.

Nigeria ranked seventh on the 2025 WWL list of the 50 worst countries for Christians.

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