Nigeria’s Middle Belt has been struck this year by a spike in farmer-herder violence, which in 2018 was six times deadlier than the Boko Haram insurgency, killing more than 2,000 people according to the International Crisis Group.
Climate-induced desertification in recent years has escalated tensions, forcing the northern herders further south into the farmers' territory, creating one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, as both sides compete for scarce resources. As killings persist, the violence has increasingly been framed as a religious problem, since the majority of herders are Muslim and most of the farmers are Christian.