World Tour: Resisting Fulani herdsmen

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a World Tour special report.

The Supreme Court of Nigeria this month upheld the death sentence of a farmer in the country’s crisis-hit northern region. His offense? He stabbed a knife-wielding herdsman who attacked him on his farm.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: The case has triggered concern in Nigerian communities where militant cattle herders have repeatedly targeted majority-Christian farming communities.

WORLD’s Africa reporter Onize Oduah has the story.

ONIZE ODUAH: Twenty-year-old Sunday Jackson was working on his farmland in Adamawa state a decade ago when a Fulani herdsman named Buba Bawuro brought his cattle to feed on Jackson’s crops.

When Jackson challenged him, both men began fighting. Bawuro brought out a knife and stabbed Jackson a few times before Jackson grabbed the knife and stabbed him back in the neck, killing him.

That altercation kept Jackson waiting behind bars for years until a court in Adamawa’s capital of Yola dished out a sentence in 2021. That sentence is death by hanging for culpable homicide.

This month, the Supreme Court in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja upheld that ruling.

Joshua Nwachukwu is a Nigerian lawyer.

NWACHUKWU: We all know that there's a constitutional right of self-defense.

He says here that the case has left many wondering what exactly constitutes self-defense.

The court argued that Jackson could have fled the scene instead of stabbing his attacker in self-defense. Unlike in the United States, Nigeria does not have a stand-your-ground law that allows people to use deadly force in self-defense without a duty to retreat.

Some extremist Fulani herders have targeted mostly Christian farming communities across northern and central Nigeria, allowing their cattle to graze on their crops and attacking their communities.

States like Benue—known as Nigeria’s food basket—have seen repeated attacks.

Wilfred Anagbe is the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Makurdi, Benue’s capital. He appeared before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa last week for a hearing on Nigeria.

ANAGBE: The Makurdi diocese in Benue state has been the epicenter of the invasion by these herders who are more like hired guns of cattle oligarchies who manipulate religion to rally the herders to eliminate the Christian population and cleanse the land in the name of Islam.

Anagbe said the police and army do not respond when they call for help.

ANAGBE: At the end of 2024, several villages were warned by the attackers of the upcoming violence and the leaders called the police for defense ahead of time, but they did not come.

At least 47 people died in a Christmas Day attack.

In north-western Kaduna state, Alheri Magaji’s majority-Christian Adara community has suffered multiple attacks for years at the hands of armed herdsmen.

MAGAJI: You're attacked in church. You go to church. They come to pack all of you in church. You're at home. They come to your house. It's just terrible, like, so what are people supposed to do? You have to defend yourself. But then if you defend yourself, and they come and the security personnel come and catch you, then you're termed as a terrorist as well.

Magaji’s hometown relies mostly on the men in the community for defense.

MAGAJI: They don't sleep at night at all. They're on guard the whole time, the whole time. And then sometimes they even attack in the mornings when the men are tired and just got back home to sleep. So it's just constant living on the edge.

Back in 2019, authorities detained Magaji’s father and other local community leaders for three months over accusations that they backed reprisal attacks against Fulanis. Magaji said in another instance, some 20 youths were also detained for six months for defending their community.

MAGAJI: But since Sunday Jackson's case, it makes us wonder, like, Okay, if Sunday Jackson is going to be sentenced to death, what happens to our people?

Nigerian lawyer Nwachukwu said he and other colleagues are still waiting on the Supreme Court to release the full judgment on Jackson’s case.

But since the Supreme court’s ruling is final, Nwachukwu says that Jackson’s future rests with the Adamawa state governor, who is now facing pressure to grant clemency. But he could also leave Jackson on death row without ever signing the final approval for his execution.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

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