Poverty in Nigeria is already rampant, but displacement exacerbates the situation. Displaced Christians generally have no farmland and little opportunity for work. Photo by Antonio Graceffo.
Apostle Wayne Daniel, a missionary based in Haipang, Orkelade, near the Plateau State Polytechnic and Jos airport, serves as the local chairman of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) and as a co-laborer with pastors across the surrounding communities. He described two attacks that struck his village in the days around Easter.
On the night of April 2, residents were at home preparing for the holiday when gunshots broke out around 10 p.m. “While we were just checking our phones, we discovered that our networks were jammed. You and your neighbor, you can’t access each other.”
This type of cellphone jamming has become a more frequently reported feature of Fulani attacks on villages. Survivors reported that when they tried to call for help or warn other villagers, the calls could not get through, leaving vulnerable communities isolated.
The attackers had entered from behind the polytechnic, climbing the fence and lying in wait. A young woman spotted them first. “When she saw them, she shouted, ‘Run, Fulani!’ and they shot her in the hip.” Despite the wound, she managed to flee.
Two other women were not as fortunate. One was shot from behind, with the bullet exiting through her chest. She died that day. The first woman, who had been taken to the hospital, died from her wounds several days later.
The attack lasted over 40 minutes. Daniel credited a local vigilante and traditional leaders with mobilizing young men who intercepted the attackers, preventing them from entering houses.
“We saw the hand of God,” he said, adding that students who normally moved through the area were, unusually, absent that evening. “If they had been there, we would have had a lot of casualties.” One of the dead was a member of his own congregation. “I lost my daughter,” he said, “because she was a member of the ministry.”
Three days later, on Easter Sunday, the attackers returned. “They entered in their hundreds” into a neighboring settlement called Pomol Village, killing three people and wounding others. One survivor sustained six bullet wounds but remained alive at the time of the interview. “You can imagine that people can come on the 2nd and still gather momentum to come on the 5th,” Daniel said. “It means they are no longer afraid of anything.”
Daniel also described a separate attack in Kasa in which a pastor from the Redeemed Christian Church of God was killed, his body later found near a military checkpoint. “They didn’t use a gun. They cut him, they sliced that man.”
When the checkpoint commander was informed that Fulani assailants were responsible, he reportedly told residents not to use that term. “They said to say ‘unknown gunmen,’” Daniel recalled.
The denial enraged local women, who organized a protest and demanded that the military post be removed. It has since been replaced by police.
Dichin Johnson Yaki Kantoma, a clergyman, shares a firsthand account of a village attack that ultimately destroyed hundreds of lives. Photo by Antonio Graceffo.
The pattern Daniel described, escalating attacks, official evasion, and communities left to fend for themselves, is not unique to Haipang. Dichin Johnson Yaki Kantoma, a clergyman posted to Kantoma in the Haile district of Mangu Local Government Area since January 2023, described the same trajectory unfolding in his own community.
From the time of his arrival, residents had been suffering low-level harassment. Armed men, identified by their dress, hats, and language as Fulani, were stopping people on roads and seizing motorcycles, raiding shops, and looting property. In April 2023, word spread that a larger attack was coming. Around 1 a.m. one night, gunshots rang out in a neighboring community. By morning, residents of Kantoma had fled.
When calm returned, people came back. Then on May 15, the attack came. “They raided Kantoma and the neighboring village called Mangu, where they killed over 40 people.” Those trying to flee were shot as they passed. The attackers burned the church Kantoma was pastoring, the parsonage, and many homes. “They made sure they burned every pastoral and the church.”
When the violence subsided, displaced residents attempted to return, but found nothing waiting for them. Families scattered across the local government area, sheltering wherever they could. The community has not stabilized since.
“Whenever people hear even the rumors about them, they will just flee. Only the brave people will stay and see what is going on.” Militants have issued direct threats to residents and their children: “We are coming to kill you people. You must leave this land.” The threats have continued in a lower-intensity form, with armed men moving through the bush, attacking individuals traveling alone and seizing motorcycles.
Both communities reflect a humanitarian crisis that statistics only partially capture. According to UNHCR, 3.6 million people are displaced in Nigeria, with approximately 2.3 million concentrated in the northeast alone. In the Middle Belt, where Christian communities predominate, Open Doors’ “No Road Home” report documents how violence has driven mass displacement, with Christians singled out for attack and facing faith-based obstacles throughout their displacement.
Displacement causes extreme poverty, forces children out of school, and leaves many suffering from malnutrition. Photo by Antonio Graceffo.
The UN does not break down the IDP population by religion, and the Hudson Institute has noted that UN reporting on Benue State omits any reference to the Christian faith of victims or the Muslim faith of their attackers, understating the religious dimension of the crisis.
The official figures also undercount the true scale of the problem. IOM data shows 77% of IDPs in north-central and north-west Nigeria live in host communities rather than camps, and those absorbed into villages can be reclassified under UN “durable solutions” frameworks as no longer displaced. In practice, they have no farmland, no reliable food source, and their children are out of school, conditions Kantoma described firsthand.
The Hudson Institute documents Fulani militants seizing and destroying the agricultural land of Middle Belt Christians, while U.S. House Appropriators found that IDP camps have become permanent settlements rather than temporary refuge. As Daniel put it, “When there is this kind of tension, you can’t go out to market. It brings starvation, it brings heart attacks from hunger, and others can just die as a result.” OCHA projects 33 million Nigerians will face food insecurity during the 2025 lean season.
Antonio Graceffo reporting from Nigeria.
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