Former Benue state Gov. Gabriel Suswam laments herdsmen’s June 13-14 slaughter of predominantly Christian farmers in Yelwata, Nigeria to media on June 19, 2025. (Screenshot from TRT World broadcast)
ABUJA, Nigeria (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – Fears of another large-scale attack on Christians are growing in Benue state, Nigeria, where Fulani herdsmen slaughtered up to 200 people in Yelwata village on June 13-14, sources said.
Initial reports confirmed 100 people had died in the attack on predominantly Christian Yelwata, but later data collected by the Diocese of Makurdi’s Foundation for Justice, Development and Peace (FJDP) estimated a total toll of up to 200, according to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
Among those slain were all nine family members of Yelwata resident Lucy Tsegba.
“My beloved mum, four sisters, three nieces and grandmother were killed during the incident,” Tsegba told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “I love them, but God loves them more. I will forever miss them. I can’t stop crying.”
In a report to ACN, local clergy said that earlier that evening, police had repelled the attackers as they tried to storm Yelwata’s St. Joseph’s Church, where up to 700 internally displaced people were sleeping.
“But then, the militants made for the town’s market square, where they reportedly used fuel to set fire to the doors of the displaced people’s accommodation, before opening fire in an area where more than 500 people were asleep,” the charity reported.
The death toll makes it the single worst atrocity in the region, where there has been a sudden upsurge in attacks and increasing signs that a concerted militant assault is underway to force an entire community to leave, ACN reported.
Security officials in Benue state on Sunday (June 22) announced the arrest of several suspects linked to the Yelwata attack.
Fears Heightened
Attacks in the past week on Yogbo village, also in Guma County, have left some residents fearing another herdsmen invasion.
“Shooting and killing of Christians in Yogbo village of Guma Local Government Area by Fulani herdsmen is ongoing,” resident Fred Samada said in a text message on Monday (June 23) to Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “Please pray for Benue state.”
Resident Tivta Samuel Aondohemba said fears have heightened in Yogbo in the past week “following the activities of armed Fulani militias in the area.”
On June 18, armed Fulani militias attempted to launch an attack on Yogbo, he said.
“They entered the community and fired several shots. Fortunately, the few security personnel stationed in the area responded, and the militias retreated,” Aondohemba said in a public statement. “However, the situation did not end there as the same armed Fulani militias were later spotted on the outskirts of Yogbo, heavily armed and grazing their cattle freely on farms belonging to Christians.”
Herdsmen also blocked the Yogbo-Gyungu Adze road and killed one Christian, he said.
“On Monday, 23rd June, the armed Fulani militias attacked Christian farmers from Yogbo,” Aondohemba said. “From these incidents, it is clear that the armed Fulani militias are targeting Yogbo for a possible large-scale attack.”
Assailant Identity
In the Yelwata attack, church leaders told ACN corpses were scattered everywhere, with the bodies of infants, children and parents burned beyond recognition.
The village’s Catholic parish priest, the Rev. Ukuma Jonathan Angbianbee, told ACN that he and others identified the assailants as Fulanis.
“There is no question about who carried out the attack. They were definitely Fulanis,” Angbianbee told ACN. “They were shouting ‘Alahu Akhbar.’”
He and other clergy in the Diocese of Makurdi criticized the security response, saying police stopped the assailants from accessing the church but were poorly equipped and unable to prevent the attack on the nearby marketplace.
A leading diocese priest commented to ACN, “The morning after the attack, there were plenty of police and other security, but where were they the previous evening when we needed them? This is by far worst atrocity we have seen. There has been nothing even close.”
Church leaders had repeatedly called for international help, saying that a jihadist plan was underway to seize land and ethnically cleanse the region of its Christian presence, the ACN report states.
The Rev. Hyacinth Alia, a Catholic priest and governor of Benue state, identified the attackers through a spokesman as “suspected Fulani herdsmen.”
War against Christians
Catholic and evangelical leaders called for an immediate end to the unprovoked bloodshed.
“The ongoing killing spree by Fulani militias is a war being waged against Christians in Nigeria,” the Rev. Yusufu Turaki, former vice president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “It’s a wrong narrative to claim that there are herdsmen/farmers clashes in the country. Having the Defense Minister, Minister of State, and National Security Adviser, all of them Muslims from Fulani ethnic group, controlling our national security, how can these protect Christians?”
Pentecostal Pastor Johnson Suleiman said that if the federal government knows it is overwhelmed or its security architecture has failed, officials should be humble enough to tell citizens.
“What is happening in Benue state is evil, barbaric and a mayhem,” Pastor Suleiman said.
Another Pentecostal leader, Isa El-Buba, said residents protesting in Abuja, the federal capital, lifted their voices not just in protest but in righteous anger.
“The killings in Benue state are not a distant tragedy, they are a national disgrace,” El-Buba said. “We call on the Nigerian government: How many more lives must be lost before you act? How long will you remain silent while the blood of innocent men, women, and children cries out from the ground?”
Leadership is a responsibility that calls for protection, and if the government cannot protect the people, then it has failed them, he said.
“We demand urgent action. We demand justice. We demand peace,” he said. “The time to speak is now. The time to act is now.”
From the Catholic Church, the bishops from the dioceses of Abuja, Onitsha, Lagos and Jalingo denounced the attacks and called on the Nigerian government to as a matter of urgency end the violence.
Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.
“They adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.
Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.
Nigeria remained among the most dangerous places on earth for Christians, according to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. Of the 4,476 Christians killed for their faith worldwide during the reporting period, 3,100 (69 percent) were in Nigeria, according to the WWL.
“The measure of anti-Christian violence in the country is already at the maximum possible under World Watch List methodology,” the report stated.
In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report. Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.
The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.
Nigeria ranked seventh on the 2025 WWL list of the 50 worst countries for Christians.
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- Former Benue state Gov. Gabriel Suswam laments herdsmen’s June 13-14 slaughter of predominantly Christian farmers in Yelwata, Nigeria to media on June 19, 2025. (Screenshot from TRT World broadcast)
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