Several days of attacks in the last week of February killed hundreds of people and sent thousands fleeing from largely Christian areas of Nigeria’s farming belt.
The armed attacks in and around Agatu, in the central Nigerian state of Benue, had features long familiar to Nigerians: ethnic Fulani cattle herders, largely Muslim, moving in on farmers, largely Christian.
Christians targeted
The long-running land conflict is frequently framed in economic terms, but it also has distinctive religious contours. Survivors quoted by Christian-rights advocates said the attackers specifically targeted Christians and churches and spared Muslims and mosques.
The violence broke out on 23 February and continued across several villages for several days, culminating on 29 February in what witnesses told Nigerian news media was a massacre in Agatu. The killings sparked protests in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. A week after the attacks began, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered an investigation.
Worse than 2010
A complete assessment of the number of dead and displaced is not available. Early social-media postings by Signal, a news startup in Abuja, reported ‘scores’ dead. An aide to Benue Governor Samuel Ortom told Agence France-Presse that ‘hundreds of lives were lost’.
The Agatu violence appeared to be worse than the 2010 attacks in Plateau state that killed over 200 Christians, according to a 2 March email sent to supporters by Emmanuel Ogebe, a Nigerian human-rights lawyer based in Washington, D.C. who specialises in crimes against Nigeria’s Christians. A Nigerian news organisation, Vanguard, quoted a survivor, Ada Ojechi, as saying the fatality rate was very high. Estimates given on 11 March set the figure at at least 500 people killed in the area of Agatu.
