Why are some Christians praying for God to destroy the Fulani people?
WTN’s Mary Crickmore reflects on the need to be trauma informed to understand the hostility to Fulani.
Rural Fulani Herders in Nigeria are being killed and threatened with ethnic cleansing
Report by Mary Crickmore, Whole Truth Nigeria Network, April 27, 2026
The estimated 20 million Fulani are one of many minority groups in conflict in Nigeria, but they are targets of unique and growing hostility. Their seasonal movement with cattle has prevented the rural herders from accessing the education system, resulting in widespread illiteracy. As the Nigerian population has grown, farms have expanded into grazing land. When farmers kill cattle in retaliation for crop damage, herders lose their livelihood, and joining a criminal kidnapping gang can be an attractive option for Fulani youth. Educated Nigerian Christian leaders have many connections in the US which they have used to propagate messaging blaming Fulani in evangelical media and in fundraising messages from US Christian non-profits.
We are concerned about ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Fulani and that this is accelerating. Many attacks on Fulani herders are unreported. Thousands of Fulani have been killed, tens of thousands are displaced, houses are burned to the ground, and cows gunned down, poisoned or stolen. Both the “United States of Biafra” USB and the “Indigenous People of Biafra” (IPOB) have issued warnings for Fulani herders to leave Biafran territory. In Kwara State in April 2026, Fulani were given a three-day ultimatum to leave three local government areas, their villages were burned, and they fled.
We need to be trauma-informed to understand the hostility to Fulani. Many middle belt majority Christian ethnic groups have experienced chronic emotional trauma and even generational trauma from the overall level of violence, insecurity and lawlessness in Nigeria. Several factors cause this violence including criminal gangs, land disputes between ethnic groups, and local vigilantism by armed youth. Over the last two decades in many Nigerian states armed youth, farmers versus Fulani herders, have engaged in cycles of violent retaliation. This trauma has led many leaders of majority Christian ethnic groups to feel growing prejudice and hostility against the Fulani people group. For example, in a trauma healing workshop I led with pastors from Benue and Taraba states, one prayer request was that God would destroy the Fulani. I have observed an enormous amount of hate speech against Fulani on Nigerian social media, including accusations that Fulani are responsible for all the problems of Nigeria and when farmers kill Fulani it is always self-defense. But acts such as pulling Fulani women and children from public transport vehicles and killing them cannot be considered self-defense. That is revenge, coming from the rage of a traumatized community.
American non-profit leaders such as Judd Saul of Equipping the Persecuted have lobbied members of Congress and stated on their websites that the violence in the middle belt of Nigeria is not a farmer-herder conflict, but rather, the genocide of Christians by Fulani jihadists. This false narrative may be motivated by the fact that evangelical donors are opposed to Muslims in general and inclined to support relief for persecuted Christians, but not for those displaced by African ethnic violence.
One of the targets in proposed House bill HR 7457 is the Mi Yetti Alla Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN). Many anti-Fulani ethnic groups have falsely blamed this association for being terrorists. In reality, MACBAN has served an important function for unschooled Fulani herders who do not speak English and are illiterate. Fulani who own cows call on educated MACBAN leaders to translate for them and give legal advice when they are accused of a crime or have a conflict with non-Fulani. When there is an incident of violence MACBAN elders meet with local officials for conflict resolution. I have seen on social media and in the Nigerian press multiple cases when MACBAN elders said an attack was part of the cycle of retribution and not Muslim jihadism, the non-Fulani became angry and insist it was terrorism. This has happened in cases where an attack by farmers on Fulani was followed by an attack by Fulani herders on farmers, and the herder-farmer land conflict was obvious.
US government policy needs to recognize the dangers to the Fulani people in Nigeria and not to take up the anti-Fulani posturing of ethnic groups who want to take land that was designated for cattle grazing and turn it into farmland. All of the anti-Fulani language in H Res. 860 and HR 7457 needs to be removed.
Mary Crickmore has 37 years’ experience in West Africa and supervised the Nigeria office of a faith-based nonprofit relief and development organization. She is a co-editor of Healing the Wounds of Trauma: How the Church Can Help, 2021 edition.
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