As Violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt Region Continues, Justice is Urgently Needed

[International Committee on Nigeria (ICON), is a multi-stakeholder nonprofit / NGO working to secure a future for all Nigerians, where rule-of-law, justice, religious freedom and constitutional rights are secured for all Nigerians, regardless of religion, tribe, or location.

Nadeshda Jayakody is a legal advisor and Isabelle Bienfait is a programme coordinator at eyeWitness to Atrocities, an NGO that supports human rights organisations, activists and others documenting human rights violations and international crimes.]

eyeWitness to Atrocities offers a free, secure mobile app that enables the capture of verifiable photos and videos – embedding date, time, and geolocation data, while preserving the chain of custody for use in legal proceedings. 

Introduction  

In recent years, violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region between certain nomadic herder communities (primarily Muslim Fulani) and sedentary farming communities (primarily Christian from various ethnic groups) has intensified. This piece outlines how patterns of violence have been documented by the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON) with the eyeWitness to Atrocities (eyeWitness) technology and, crucially, what pathways for redress, justice and non-occurrence look like. The piece calls for urgent action in Nigeria to achieve justice for the affected communities and address the complex root causes of violence

Although violence in the Middle Belt region usually garners little attention internationally, there have been some recent developments on this issue. Just last month the President of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened to intervene in Nigeria militarily if the Nigerian government fails to prevent the killing of Christians. Moreover, the United States has designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern for its alleged violations of religious freedom. In response, Nigerian President Tinubu declared that his administration protects citizens of all faiths and opposes religious persecution. While Christians are significantly affected by the violence in the Middle Belt, Muslim communities in Nigeria are also impacted.

In the Middle Belt, armed assailants are killing civilians, burning villages, destroying property (including homes, hospitals, churches and clinics), and damaging agricultural lands, crops, food reserves and food storage structures. The former United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary (ESA) executions described the violence as the country’s “[…] gravest security challenge” in a 2021 report. As recently as June 2025, more than 200 people were killed in a series of attacks in Benue State. As of the end of 2024,  due to violence across the nation, with women and children often disproportionally affected. Certain reports attribute the incidents to ongoing cycles of retaliatory attacks between herders and farmers, whereas others report that the violence is asymmetrical in nature.  

The existing literature identifies several reasons for the violence. These include, inter alia, a weak security apparatus; climate change; poor governance and corruption; ethnic/religious/tribal tensions and discrimination; impunity for crimes; and the increased flow of arms. The disenfranchisement of younger factions within the Fulani population is also an important factor. Their growing sense of marginalization and attraction to extremist ideologies has been linked to socio-political neglect and broader struggles over identity and belonging. In sum, the root causes of the violence are nuanced and complex and misattributing this violence to one cause risks delaying meaningful solutions.

In October this year, eyeWitness and the ICON submitted a Joint Urgent Appeal to the UN which finds that violations of the right to life and the right to an adequate standard of living, including both the right to housing and food, are occurring in the Middle Belt. The Urgent Appeal, submitted to the UN Special Rapporteurs on ESA executions, on the right to adequate housing and on the right to food, builds on two previous reports to the UN submitted in 2022 and 2023.  

Documenting Patterns of Violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt 

Methodology 

Since March 2019, ICON and other Nigerian organisations and individuals have been documenting such attacks using eyeWitness’ App (the App), a free mobile camera app which enables users to securely capture authenticated photos, videos and audio recordings of possible human rights violations and international crimes. eyeWitness has provided training to documenters on how to use the App and best documentation practices. Over the years, eyeWitness’ partners and independent App users in Nigeria have captured over 7,700 items of footage. 

The most recent Joint Urgent Appeal by eyeWitness and ICON is based on 3,276 items of footage captured between January 2022 and March 2025. This closed-source footage shows civilian fatalities, damage and destruction of properties including houses and churches, and food-related incidents such as the destruction of agricultural lands, crops, food reserves and storage structures. The eyeWitness team analysed the footage alongside accompanying documenters’ notes and open-source information and identified 113 possible incidents. Of those, nine particularly egregious incidents are highlighted in the Joint Urgent Appeal that are relevant to the UN Special Rapporteurs’ mandates. 

The technology behind the eyeWitness App ensures that photo, video, and audio files captured are authentic. The App uses the mobile phone’s sensors to record verifiable metadata (date, time and geolocation) at the time the footage is being recorded. Once captured, documenters can upload the footage and associated metadata to eyeWitness’ secure server. This creates a tamper-proof chain of custody – an important safeguard in a world where misinformation/disinformation and footage manipulation are increasingly commonplace. While open-source information can be difficult to verify, eyewitness’ technology helps authenticate and protect the evidentiary value of closed-source footage captured with the App by preserving the original copy and unalterable metadata.  

Despite the high number of items captured with the App in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, the incidents highlighted in the Joint Urgent Appeal only constitute a fraction of the total number of attacks that have taken place in the context of the intercommunal violence. Many attacks go unreported due to security concerns, restricted access to affected areas, a shortage of documenters, and/or limited media attention. The eyeWitness technology tries to address some of these barriers – particularly around security for documenters – by incorporating measures to protect user safety and anonymity, such as a hidden gallery and the ability to register with a pseudonym. 

Key Findings in the Joint Urgent Appeal 

The attacks documented with the App and highlighted in the Urgent Appeal are often characterised by extreme brutality. Some victims appear to have been killed by indiscriminate gunshots, while others were attacked by machetes or other cutting weapons, or burnt as a result of assailants setting fire to their houses. It is important to recognise that the attacks have a particularly devastating impact on women and children. Not only were women and children killed but they are disproportionately impacted by the attacks on their villages and heightened insecurity. ICON documenters have captured footage with the App showing displaced people – primarily women and children – in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps or relief distribution sites in the days or weeks following attacks.

The incidents exhibit common patterns and modus operandi, suggesting a coordinated approach by the perpetrators. For example, assailants frequently attacked villages at night, often while residents were asleep and unarmed. One notable example is an attack that took place on 1 October 2023 in Du village of Plateau State, in which at least eight people, including two children were killed,and five were injured. Accompanying documenters’ notes suggest that the assailants fired indiscriminately at victims as they slept. 

In relation to the incidents documented with the App, documenters, witnesses ICON interviewed, and relevant open-source information consistently point to the assailants as being Fulani militia(s). They also reported instances in which Nigerian security forces were informed of both impending and ongoing attacks but failed to intervene, and of possible active complicity from soldiers who allegedly shot civilians. 

The incidents detailed amount to violations of domestic and international law. Specifically, the killing of unarmed civilians violates the right to life as protected under Section 33 of Nigeria’s Constitution, as well as Articles 6(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 4 of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights (Banjul Charter). Article 6 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 5 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child obligate the State to ensure the survival, protection and development of the child “to the maximum extent possible”.

Further, although Nigeria’s Constitution does not expressly recognise socio-economic rights, the Urgent Appeal draws on the right to an “adequate standard of living” enshrined in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which includes “adequate housing” and “adequate food”. Articles 16 (right to health) and 24 (right to a satisfactory environment) of the Banjul Charter have been interpreted to include the right to food. The destruction of housing and other civilian infrastructure, including agricultural lands, crops, food reserves and storage structures may constitute violations of this right. States are obligated to not only refrain from violating the rights to life, food and adequate housing, but have a positive obligation to hold accountable non-state actors that violate them. 

Available information indicates that the patterns of attacks against civilians could satisfy the legal elements of crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Rome Statute (to which Nigeria is a party). Further investigations and analysis are required in this regard. 

Pathways for Redress, Justice and Non-recurrence  

Some Examples of Action to Date 

Little has been done in Nigeria to provide redress to victims, bring perpetrators to justice and ultimately ensure non-recurrence by addressing impunity and the root causes of the violence. While there have been some arrests recently, there is currently no publicly available information on prosecutions. In addition, although there have been peace agreements between certain farmer and herder communities, violence continues. 

At the regional level, in February 2019, the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) Court of Justice ordered Nigerian authorities to investigate mass killings and destruction of property that occurred in the Agatu community in Benue State in 2016. These attacks were allegedly committed by Fulani herdsmen. In April 2023, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Commission), through two of its rapporteurs, expressed concern over violence in the Middle Belt and issued a set of recommendations for the Nigerian government to action. It is unclear whether the Nigerian government has responded accordingly to these findings. 

At the international level, UN procedures have been effectively used to draw attention to the violence. For instance, certain UN Special Rapporteurs have written about the issue and concerns were raised when Nigeria’s human rights record was reviewed by the UN Human Rights Council as part of its 45^th session of the Universal Periodic Review in January 2024. However, given the severity of the violence and its scale, greater attention is needed. 

There has been no action in terms of individual criminal responsibility for the violence at the international level. The scope of the ICC’s current work on Nigeria does not cover inter-communal violence in the Middle Belt. In any case, despite the then Prosecutor’s determination in 2020 that there was a reasonable basis to believe that members of Boko Haram and its splinter groups and the Nigerian Security Force have committed acts constituting crimes against humanity and war crimes, there remains no investigation.

A Possible Path Forward 

In Nigeria, it is imperative that transparent investigations and prosecutions that adhere to fair trial rights take place. Furthermore, it is recommended that all relevant levels of government in Nigeria provide: temporary resettlement options for victims; rehabilitation support such as trauma counselling and therapy; skills training, micro grants or loans, as well as other assistance to those who have lost their livelihoods, for example, provide farmers with tools or equipment to re-start farming activities. In addition, the government should return lost land to farmers; ensure IDPs can return to their villages; and provide infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals in the affected villages. It is important that the root causes of the violence are addressed and inclusive peace processes that engage both herder and farmer communities are further explored. Special measures should be taken to address the compounding harms faced by women and children because of the violence. 

Litigation options should be explored at the regional and international levels, including cases before ECOWAS. Moreover, it is important to harness regional mechanisms such as the African Commission to draw attention to these issues and compel the Nigerian government to act. It is also recommended that a UN inquiry or fact-finding mission and a UN Special Rapporteur with a country mandate on Nigeria are established to provide a dedicated focus on this issue. Because Nigeria has not adequately responded to previous recommendations by regional and international bodies on ways to address the violence, civil society actors and the relevant mechanisms could work with the government to ensure implementation.  

Concurrently, other states should be working with the Nigerian government to address these human rights violations. 

Any efforts taken should centre the victims and communities affected and be locally-led. 

Conclusion 

Non-state armed groups largely operate with impunity in the Middle Belt region, killing unarmed civilians, setting villages ablaze, and destroying food reserves and farms. The Nigerian Government has done little to halt the violence and address human rights concerns. 

Considering recent interest on this issue internationally, it is imperative that this momentum is harnessed to push for urgent action in Nigeria and globally to achieve justice for the affected communities and ultimately end the violence. 

Photo attribution: “Herders and their animals in the river” by Musaddam Idriss is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0