Nigeria’s Pulaku Vigilantes: How State Collapse Fuels Cyclical Violence and Marginalisation
Original framing: “Pulaku: The two faces of Nigeria’s vigilantes” — Al Jazeera
Non-Fulani communities, particularly **Berom farmers** and **Christian minorities**, face the brunt of Pulaku’s violence but are rarely heard in mainstream narratives. A 2023 **Human Rights Watch** report found that **80% of vigilante abuses** go unreported due to fear of retaliation, while Fulani victims of kidnapping (e.g., in Zamfara) are often ignored. Women, who bear the burden of displacement, describe Pulaku as a **'triple threat'**—displacing them from land, exposing them to sexual violence, and eroding their economic autonomy. The silence around these voices ensures that solutions remain top-down and ineffective.
Nigeria’s Pulaku vigilantes are not a moral failing but a **symptom of a governance system designed to fail its most vulnerable**.
The state’s historical weaponisation of ethnicity, its abandonment of Fulani pastoralists through colonial land policies and neo-patrimonial neglect, and its refusal to address climate-induced migration have created a perfect storm where vigilantism becomes the only 'governance' available. The cross-cultural pattern is clear: from Rwanda’s militias to the DRC’s Mai-Mai, parallel justice systems emerge when the state prioritises extraction over protection. Yet Nigeria’s elite cling to the illusion of control, framing Pulaku as a 'law and order' problem rather than a **structural rebellion against abandonment**. The trickster here is the state itself—pretending to be shocked by the chaos it enabled, while foreign powers and local elites profit from the instability. The only path forward is **restorative justice led by Indigenous systems**, economic alternatives rooted in climate adaptation, and a truth process that names the state’s complicity. Without this, Pulaku will not be the exception but the rule—a warning of what happens when governance collapses in the face of ecological and economic stress.