Report: Ethnic Fulani militia overtake Boko Haram as Nigeria’s deadliest terror group

A new six-year report has challenged the widespread belief that the Boko Haram terrorist organization and its affiliate, Islamic State West Africa Province, ISWAP, are responsible for the majority of civilian killings in Nigeria. Instead, Fulani ethnic militia have killed far more than the two groups combined, according to the 105-page report published June 30 by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, ORFA.

The rather chilling report lays bare the staggering human cost of Nigeria’s security crisis over the past six years, revealing that over 79,000 people had been killed and nearly 35,000 abducted in a wave of ethno-religious violence largely orchestrated by Fulani militant groups.

Drawing on localized research and conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) spanning October 2019 to September 2025, the report paints a picture of systematic terror that the state has failed to contain.

In a section titled “Four Times Boko Haram? How the World Misreads Nigeria’s Violence,” the report reveals that “79,323 people were killed in Nigeria between 2020 and 2025, an average of seven attacks per day. More than 42,000 were innocent civilians.”

It states further that 22,835 of the civilians killed were Christian, 10,519 were moderate Muslim civilians, and 184 were African Traditional Religionists. Meanwhile, the religious identities of 8,495 victims remained unknown.

When the “unknown” data points are mathematically distributed, the distributed number of Christian civilians killed rises to 28,551.

The primary engine of the slaughter

The report identifies the primary engine of this slaughter as the nomadic and predominantly Muslim group Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM), thereby challenging the long-held idea that the killings in Nigeria are mostly carried out by Boko Haram.

“Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) — the terror groups most blamed for violence — together carried out 12% of civilian killings: Boko Haram 8%, and ISWAP 4%,” the report states.

By contrast, Fulani ethnic militia and its affiliates were responsible for 44% of all civilian deaths, and 53% of all Christian civilian killings.

“The religious terrorism of Boko Haram and the like have gradually been ‘overtaken’ by the ethno-religious terrorism of FEM,” the report states.

Frans Vierhout, a Senior Research Analyst of the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, said the patterns of the violence are hard to ignore.

“The data makes this very difficult to ignore,” he notes. “We look at how killing occurs. Who they target, where they operate, the seasonal fluctuations of killings — and the evidence points strongly in one direction. Violence linked to Fulani militias is the dominant force behind Nigeria’s death toll. The Western preoccupation with Boko Haram is, at best, misleading.”

“Nigeria is incubating a terror network which the outside world has yet to acknowledge,” he stated.

The report also documented “34,773 civilians abducted over the six years, with ‘Fulani terror groups’ and ‘unidentified terror groups’ carrying out 43% and 49% of abductions respectively.”

The roots of Fulani militia violence

There is a history to the FEM takeover of violence in Nigeria. The report quotes experts on the ground who trace the growing influence of Fulani ethnic militia to the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The expert, who couldn’t be named for security reasons, recalls how, before 9/11, Fulani nomadic herders who live predominantly in northern Nigeria would migrate south “to our predominantly Christian area with their cattle for grazing. The manure their cows produced was free natural fertilizer. If their cattle strayed onto a farm, they would approach the owner and offer compensation. In the rainy season, they moved back north … It was largely peaceful coexistence.”

But then 9/11 took place and accelerated violent extremism globally.

“In northern Nigeria, a movement of clerics indoctrinated in Saudi Arabia called Izala had been spreading an extremist interpretation of Islam and growing powerful. By 2000, twelve northern Nigerian states had imposed Sharia law, despite Nigeria’s constitution prohibiting a state religion. The Izala movement, combined with Fulani ethnic supremacy, captured the political establishment in the north.

It led to the formation of an ethno-religious terrorist group called the Fulani Ethnic Militia, which began to reign terror on non-Fulani Muslim civilians and Christian civilians alike,” the report quotes the expert as saying.

The expert’s argument aligns with that of Nigeria’s leading human rights and democracy activist, Emeka Umeagbalasi, who has blamed the escalation of Fulani Jihadist violence on the rise of President Muhamadou Buhari to power.

Buhari, a Fulani himself, had worked hard to ‘Fulanize’ and ‘Islamize’ Nigeria, according to Umeagbalasi.

According to a report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety) that Umeagbalasi-its founder signed, Fulani ethnic militia actually killed 700 Christians as a ‘farewell gift’ to Buhari when the late President was leaving office in May 2023.

“The Nigerian radical Islamic leaders who marked the end of their civilian office tenures on 29th May 2023 were wished ‘farewell’ by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, who marked the end of their office tenures by slaughtering not less than 700 defenseless Christians in May 2023 (month of handover),” states the Intersociety report.

The same Month, the then governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai—a man who had publicly offered support to the ethnic Fulani militia—also saw an end to his tenure. That ‘farewell gift’ was also for him, according to Umeagbalasi.

Under Buhari and El-Rufai’s watch, Fulani-driven violence led to the killing of at least 31,350 Christians and attacks on over 200 pastors, according to Intersociety. Approximately 34,000 moderate Muslims were also butchered or hacked to death.

The farming season slaughter

The tactical brutality of the militants is laid bare in the timing of their attacks, explains the report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa. Seventy-five percent of civilian victims were killed during direct attacks on their communities. For Christian farmers in the North Central geopolitical zone, the deadliest months were consistently the heart of the farming season, which is in April and May.

During this critical agricultural window, security forces were notably absent, the report notes. It suggests the military concentrated its operations in the North West and North East to combat Boko Haram, leaving the North Central highly vulnerable.

“Government forces largely failed to intervene, focusing their efforts elsewhere while these attacks continued unopposed,” the researchers found.

A crisis of abductions

Alongside the killings, Nigeria has endured an epidemic of mass abductions. Between October 2019 and September 2025, 34,917 people were abducted, with 34,773 of them being civilians. This means that every day, at least two people are abducted in Nigeria, according to the report.

“Christian abductions numbered 15,932 and Muslims 15,272 in total over the period,” the report noted, but raised concerns over what it called a ‘Captivity by Creed’ pattern based on survivor accounts.

Survivors had told the researchers that while abducted Muslims get more lenient treatment, the same couldn’t be said of Christian captives, who were more likely to pay higher ransoms, be tortured, or even killed by their captors.

According to Steven Kefas, Senior Research Analyst at ORFA and author of “Captivity by Creed: The Religious Sorting System Nobody Talks About,” field research reveals that “a lesser value is assigned to a Christian life.”

“From the moment of capture, Muslim and Christian hostages enter different realities. It is not about individual captors. It is a system – consistent across multiple states, armed groups, and multiple years of survivor testimony,” Kefas said.

The human toll of the violence

Beyond the cold statistics, the report highlights the cascading humanitarian disaster.

“Behind the numbers are devastating realities for many Nigerians,” the authors write.

“Community attacks not only caused death and kidnapping but also led to severe trauma and economic devastation through the destruction of properties and the loss of land, incurring ransom debts and forced displacement.”

“Many Nigerians live in fear,” the report states.

The researchers called for a broader response to the crisis, indicating that “without a full accounting of the religious dimensions of violence in Nigeria, attempts to find solutions remain incomplete.”