Syvaniah Ezekiel had no idea what her life would turn into when she woke up on December 24, 2023. She was completely unaware that her spouse, the community pastor, would not be spending Christmas with her.
Her worries for the day were what to cook for her husband, Ezekiel Rigat, her visiting kids, and their family’s Christmas celebration the next day. Syvaniah said that while cooking, she heard gunfire growing louder every second. She then saw her fellow villagers running. At that point, she ran into the bush with them. She and the other villagers managed to flee the attack, but her husband wasn’t lucky; he was killed and set ablaze by the armed insurgents who stormed Lunghai community, under Bokkos local government area in Plateau State and damaged several properties.
Syvaniah was unaware of her husband’s death until the following day, December 25, 2023, when the villagers started going back to their homes. She drew nearer after seeing the grieving congregation, realising her husband’s body was among the burned rubber seats of the church.
When asked if she could talk about what had happened, she replied, “They killed my husband,” she said in her dialect, to a villager who translated to this reporter.
Mikal Dauda, a community leader and a farmer in Lunghai, the same village as Syvaniah, said their village was attacked by their herders’ neighbours. He claimed that the Lunghai community had no problems with their herder’s neighbour, which would have justified the killing of their pastor and the extent of the damage that was seen on December 24.
“We always had disagreements with them, but it was always during the planting and harvesting season, as their cows usually damage our farms,” he stated.
“They burned houses to the ground”, Dauda further said.” I still don’t know why they attacked us to this day. It is not religion or ethnicity, as is being said. To this day, I still don’t know why we were attacked and our pastor killed”.
Explaining the origin of the Bokkos conflict while touching on the Christmas Eve attack, Kefas Mallai, a community leader and chairman of the Youth Peace Network and Community Peace Observer in Bokkos Local Government Area, said a disagreement between a farmer and a herder in the Murish community during the Muslim fasting period led to the killing on December 24, 2023.
He said a herder had killed a farmer in the course of a disagreement during the Ramadan fast in 2023. “The farmer community killed him and fifty-five of his cows, and also attacked his settlement and killed four other people.” This incident, he said, spurred retaliatory attacks from Fulani herders to natives of Mangu, leading to a cycle of violence in surrounding villages, including Kambar Pelli.
Kambar Pelli is a community in the Bokkos local government area, but it is inhabited mostly by Mangu Mwaghavul-speaking people. The community, according to Kefas, had been attacked on the night of December 23rd and the early hours of December 24, 2023, where sixteen people were killed. “This was what led to the December 24, 2023 attack.”
He continued, “When they came, they didn’t say we were here for Mwaghavul-speaking people, but just started killing people, and this led natives in Bokkos and Mangu to come together and begin ransacking the Fulani settlements in Bokkos as they believed they were the perpetrators.”
He further said that while the Fulani herders were being chased from their settlements, they began calling other herders in other areas in Bokkos and beyond to inform them of what was happening. While those in Bokkos were coming to their rescue, they also began attacking native villages in Bokkos on their way.
The Tahore community was one of the communities attacked with 31 people killed.
Christiana Danjuma lost her husband and one of her children who was 25 years old when the Tahore attack happened. She and other community members only managed to escape by running through incoming attackers. In the process, they killed six people, while 25 others were killed in the community, raising the total death toll in the community to 31.
In an interview, the Sarkin Hausawa, Audu Idi Balarebe, whose community houses some displaced Fulani herders, clarified that the killing on December 24 that sparked international outcry was not the result of religious or ethnic differences, but a dispute between a herder and farmer that ultimately resulted in the farmer’s death.
According to him, the farmer’s death sparked reprisals from the farming community, which in turn sparked back-and-forth fighting between the indigenes and Fulani herders, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of their cows and the demise of 22 people in Fulani settlements across the Bokkos local government area.
Abubakar Hassan and Zainab Yakubu, who are from the same Fulani settlement under Tangur district in Bokkos that was affected by the conflict, disclosed in an interview that nine people in their settlement had been killed. Hassan and other Fulanis now residing as IDPs in Bokkos express displeasure with the situation, as they have been chased away from their homes and their livelihoods destroyed.
The experiences of Syvaniah, Hassan, and Zainab Yakubu is a reflection of how the farmer-herder conflict in Nigeria is affecting communities across the country.
Gunmen suspected to be herders had on Sunday, December 24, 2023, invaded the villages of Ndun, Ngyong, Murfet, Makundary, Tamiso, Chiang, Tahore, Gawarba, Dares, Meyenga, Darwat, and Butura Kampani in the Barkin Ladi, Mangu, and Bokkos regions of Plateau State. They set fire to homes, opened fire on locals, and killed over 150 people.
One of Nigeria’s biggest security concerns in recent years has been the conflict between farmers and herders. Disagreements between farmers and herders across the country over the use of land and water, obstruction of historic migration routes, cattle theft, and crop damage have all been linked to the conflict, explaining it as essentially a problem of resource management.
Narratives woven on various social media platforms tend to paint either Muslims or Christians as the greatest victims of the conflict and even accuse security forces of aiding aggressors. This is especially done with the help of pictures and videos showing totally different events, a trend that may make it harder to restore calm.
A researcher and editor of Abuja-based FactCheckHub, the fact-checking arm of the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), Opeyemi Kehinde, said false information shared on social media whenever there are clashes between herders and farmers sometimes aggravate the conflicts.
According to him, Nigeria is currently polarised due to many factors, including religious, political, and multi-ethnic.
“These factors are what misinformation purveyors often take advantage of to promote hate speech and spread fake news, thus aggravating tension, breeding enmity, and threatening national unity and the peaceful coexistence of the whole nation.
“In the past, both state and non-state actors have deployed misinformation towards achieving their selfish agendas during conflict times in Northern Nigeria, including Plateau State, which has witnessed multiple conflicts ranging from ethno-religious to farmers-herders crises, among others,” Kehinde said.
He added: “This has contributed in no small measure to the perennial crisis in the North Central State, which has defied nearly all solutions to mitigate the conflict as misinformation stokes continuous violence and multiple counter-attacks.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), in a report published in 2018, said its research showed that fake news on social media platforms fuels the farmers-herders crisis in Nigeria. The report claimed at the time that false reports of violence between communities in Nigeria are being exacerbated by fake images that are making the rounds on social media.
Nigeria’s north-central region has been the most hit by conflict between farmers and herders, which is being fueled by a problem of resource management.
Plateau State, which lies in North-central Nigeria has seen frequent clashes between farmers and herders. Mangu, Bokkos, and Barkin Ladi LGAs have been the scene of various clashes between herders and farmers in recent years.
We reviewed social media platforms using advanced search as well as various hashtags (#PlateauMassacre, #PlateauChristianKilling, and #PlateauMuslimKilling) on X and Facebook and found multiple accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers on various social media platforms from within Nigeria and outside with vested interests amplifying false claims that aggravated the conflict. Also, we found countless examples of problematic online posts that could potentially be considered misinformation or disinformation. Some of these users made false claims online, which may heighten tensions.
Notwithstanding legislation like the amended Cybercrimes Act (2024), and a rule prohibiting the dissemination of false information with the intention of inciting fear, the Nigerian government and social media firms have not taken legal action against those who posted false information about the conflict on their platforms.
Despite being marked as read, Hadiza Umar, the head of corporate affairs at NITDA, did not reply to two messages that were sent to her WhatsApp number about what the agency is doing about inaccurate information posted online regarding the conflict between farmers and herders.
Also, as at the time of this publication, Meta, the owner of Facebook, and X did not respond to detailed questions sent on June 27, 2024, about why they don’t take any action whenever there is inaccurate post relating to the conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria.
A 2017 International Crisis Group assessment revealed that “many natural water sources throughout Nigeria’s far-northern Sahelian belt have dried up due to drought and desertification. Degrading pastures and the migration of a large number of herders to the south in search of grassland and water for their herds are other factors mentioned in the assessment.”
The conflict is becoming more polarised along ethnic, regional, and religious lines as a result of false information spreading on social media. Most of the herders can be classified as Muslim-Fulani, who are primarily nomadic. Nevertheless, the farmers are generally found in numerous ethnic groups that practise Christianity.
Amnesty International said that there have been incessant attacks on communities in the Barkin Ladi, Bokkos, and Mangu local government areas of Plateau State. From December 2023 to February 2024, 1,336 people were killed: 533 women, 263 children, and 540 men. The total number of people displaced is 29,554, out of which 13,093 are children and 16,461 are women.
Many posts use online reference language, claiming religion and ethnicity as the drivers of the conflicts in Plateau State.
For Emeka Okoro, a security analyst with SBM Intelligence, social media platforms need to establish clear policies and enforcement as the spread of false information online relating to the farmer-herders conflict will significantly impact the conflict by fueling mistrust, escalating tensions, provoking violence, and obstructing constructive dialogue and resolution.
Social media users behind information disorder complicating farmers/ herders conflict
As news of the Christmas Eve massacre and January 2024 religious and ethnic conflict began appearing online, numerous accounts based on a variety of stories about the killings and the perpetrators began to circulate on social media. Some claimed that Christian natives were killing Fulani herders alleged to be Muslims in Plateau State, while others claimed Islamist militants were responsible for the deaths of Christians in north-central Nigeria.
On December 26, 2023, a Dutch conservative activist, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, shared a controversial post on X (previously known as Twitter); this time not about her usual posts relating to politics in Europe and the United States, but about the killing that occurred 5,126 km away from her country.
She had uploaded a video gotten from a pro-Biafra account on X, TheBiafra_Child NwaChineke (De General) (@TheBiafraChild) showing the bodies of multiple people, saying it was a scene of Muslim extremist killing of Christians in Nigeria’s north central state of Plateau. Eva made the post two days after news of herdsmen attacks in some Plateau communities began spreading online.
However, a reverse image on a screenshot captured from the video showed that the video was uploaded online on December 16, 2023, by Salah Mohammed Ahmed (@SalahMo73628462), an X account. It featured a French description, which was translated into English using Google Translate, indicating that the video originated from Djibo in Burkina Faso rather than Nigeria.
Also, two other well-known accounts on X that made a similar claim were Yasir Arafat Jubril (@oi_shaekh) and Kangyang Pwajok (@pwajok_jane). Pwajok claimed that Muslims were responsible for the murders in a reaction to a Channels TV post on X on December 25, 2023. The post has garnered over 28,000 views.
36 minutes after Pwajok’s post, Yasir posted that a Fulani village in Jos was allegedly attacked. Yasir’s post appears to be referencing the Burkina Faso video that Eva and @TheBiafraChild shared. The attack on December 24, 2023, was also not in Jos, as alleged by Yasir, but in the Bokkos local government area which is 76.5 km from the Jos local government area.
Pwajok also celebrated a December 30, 2023 Fox News report on the killing titled: “The world looks the other way as Christians are killed for sport by jihadists in Nigeria.”
Another account that described the conflict as Muslim terrorism issues against the Christian community is Visegrad. Visegrad is a Polish-owned online news site that publishes information relating to current events. With more than a million followers on X, the platform had made more than 20 posts since December 2023 in which it prominently labelled herders as Islamist Fulani militias.
Many other posts focus on the use of images and videos in spreading false information. For example, a post found on X showing a photo collage of the interior of a church, and a floor stained with blood is purported to be from Plateau State. This was used to depict the attacks as being driven by religion. The photo garnered thousands of reposts on X, but when it was subjected to Google Reverse Image searches, the results showed that the photos were from the Owo church terrorists’ attack in Ondo State which happened on June 5, 2022.
An examination of social media accounts that spread the image, using advanced search on X, indicated that many of them are not from Nigeria. The collage photos were shared online by X accounts namely @RonEnglish and Nile Gardiner. Their online profiles show that while the former is a British conservative commentator, the latter is a foreign policy analyst based in Washington, DC. Other foreign accounts who also posted the collage of photos include Israelis Cherryl E and Hananya Naftali.
Naftali is an Israeli influencer and an aide to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Six months later, Naftali’s post has been viewed more than 1.6 million times, with 15,000 reposts, 2,600 comments and 25,000 likes.
Gardiner had reposted Naftali post alleging that the president of the United States, Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak were mum on the issue.
In another post, a video of men suspected to be Islamists was alleged to be from Plateau State. On a closer inspection using the InVid video verifier, it was confirmed that the video was first uploaded on X by a security analyst and counter-insurgency specialist in the Lake Chad region, Zagazola Makama on December 26, 2023. It clarified that the video showed members of the terrorist organisation, Boko Haram, storming the Islamic State of West Africa province (ISWAP) position at Gaizuwa, Sambisa Forest, after ISWAP had taken off.
The video was found on a Russian based Telegram channel and Remix News & Views on X, a platform that purports to provide news and commentary from Central Europe. Both claimed that the video was shot in Plateau State.
The Russian based Telegram channel “Срочно, Сейчас” (Urgent,Now) with more than 176,786 subscribers had on December 28, 2023 posted a series of images and videos entitled, “In Nigeria, terrorists killed 198 Christians on Christmas Eve.”
The post shared by the channel had three videos and four photos. The channel also alleged men from the Nigerian Police and Army were supporting attacks against villagers, stating that “the police and army are accused of supporting the massacre as they did not respond to the massacre for about 12 hours.”
One of the videos in reference to the claim that Nigerian soldiers escorted gunmen to the murder of several people on Christmas eve in Plateau State shows people in military uniforms amidst several gun-wielding bandits on motorbikes.
Using the InVid video verifier, it was discovered that the video was not connected to the fatal occurrence in Plateau State and had been available online since September 2023.
A security expert and Journalist, Mohammed Idris (@Eedris4Peace), with some knowledge of bandits’ operations in the Northern part of Nigeria, had earlier uploaded pictures from a gathering on X on September 16, 2023, alleging it to be a truce meeting between community members in Katsina and bandits. He had identified the meeting to have taken place at Fankama village in Faskari Local Government Area in Katsina State.
Another image that appeared on the Russian Telegram channel is a collage of six different pictures of a woman and children and another photo showing five people wrapped in white clothes being prepared for burial. However, a Google reverse image search showed that the collage of photos was from a blog named The Famous Naija, which reported the killing of a 32-year-old Adamawa woman named Harira Jubril and her four children in 2022 by gunmen in southeastern Nigeria.
Another X account, End Wokeness (@EndWokeness), with more than 2 million followers, posted three images of charred buildings and another of two security personnel standing guard at a burned building to accompany the claim that the attack had been carried out by Jihadists. Since it was uploaded on December 26, 2023, the post has had over 3.4 million views.
A Google image reverse search shows the building in the first image as the correctional centre that was attacked by gunmen on April 5, 2021 in Imo State, freeing over 1,500 prisoners in the process. The images in the second and third places are from a previous attack that took place in April 2022 in Kanam LGA of Plateau State.
The January 2024 crisis in the Mangu local government area further sparked the spread of false claims online about the inter-communal violence on social media. For example, on January 25, 2024, another image of a mass burial surfaced on X. The poster said the Nigerian government was keeping quiet about the murders of Christians in the Plateau and other regions of the country. He said this was because the president and vice president are Muslims, and he urged Christians to fight back.
However, a Google reverse image search on the image showed that it was taken in May 2018 in Benue State at the burial of two priests and seventeen worshippers killed by suspected Fulani herders.
Also, a Facebook user, Ghali Usman, claimed on January 24, 2024, that 96 Muslim deaths had been verified in Mangu, along with the destruction of two schools and the burning of ten mosques.
The image, according to a reverse image search, is of a mosque in Billiri, Gombe. It was set on fire in February 2021 due to a dispute over a traditional title and the death toll is also at odds with a statement released by Jama’atu Nasril Islam’s First Aid Group, which claimed to have buried 16 victims due to the violence.
A Facebook user named Victor Bazy used a March 2018 image of a house burned by suspected herders during a violent attack in Kogi State to reference the attacks on Mangu in January 2024.
Okoro of SBM Intelligence acknowledged the issue of false information online relating to the farmers conflict, but added that to stem it, there is a need for social media platforms to change algorithms for moderating and fact-checking content to reduce harmful content spreading online.
“The spread of false information online during herder-farmer clashes is harmful, escalating tensions, obscuring the truth, perpetuating stereotypes, and undermining trust. It can also amplify simplistic narratives, mobilise militant groups, and perpetuate violence. However, verifying sources, fact-checking, and promoting credible news can help combat misinformation and foster a more informed and peaceful resolution,” Okoro said.
* This report was completed with the support of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development and the Open Society Foundations.
Keep up the good work ogami Shehu Bello.