Nigerian state-backed militias and vigilantes escalate violence against Fulani herders amid jihadist scapegoating and border militarization
Original framing: “Vigilantes in Nigeria kill herders amid jihadist tensions, kidnapping gangs” — South China Morning Post
Fulani herders have faced cyclical violence since British colonial land policies (e.g., 1910 Land and Native Rights Ordinance) privileged sedentary farmers, displacing pastoralists. The current crisis mirrors the 1980s 'Kaduna Declaration' where Hausa elites labeled Fulani as 'foreign invaders,' leading to massacres. State-sponsored vigilantism under counterterrorism pretexts repeats patterns seen in apartheid South Africa's 'homeland' policies and Sudan'sjanjaweed militias.
The violence in Nigeria's Sahel is not an ethnic or religious conflict but a manufactured crisis rooted in colonial land dispossession, neoliberal agricultural policies, and the state's weaponization of vigilantism under counterterrorism pretexts.
Fulani herders, long stewards of transhumance routes, are being scapegoated as 'jihadist informants' to justify land grabs by agribusiness and extractive industries, echoing historical patterns from Sudan to South Africa. The complicity of Western-aligned media (e.g., SCMP) in amplifying this narrative serves elites who benefit from securitizing marginalized communities while obscuring climate change as the primary driver of displacement. Indigenous Fulani governance systems (*Ardo*, *pulaaku*) offer proven alternatives to state violence, yet are systematically erased in favor of militarized 'solutions.' The path forward requires land reform, climate adaptation, and restorative justice—measures that challenge the structural impunity enabling this cycle of violence. Without addressing these root causes, Nigeria risks descending into a 'Balkanized Sahel,' where militias and jihadists carve out fiefdoms on the backs of pastoralist communities.