From 2010-2020, Nigeria experienced a sharp rise in violence propagated by the jihadist group Boko Haram in the northeast region and escalating inter-group conflict between farmers and Fulani pastoralists in the north-central region. Boko Haram’s violent attacks led to states of emergency in both 2011 and 2013; and while that group has dominated the news, conflicts between Fulani pastoralists and settled agricultural communities are often more deadly.
While the absolute number of incidents involving Boko Haram was higher over the 2004-2019 period (Figure 1), most of those attacks occurred in Borno state, the epicenter of that conflict. By contrast, the herder-farmer conflict grew in both intensity and geographic reach over this period, peaking in 2018 and becoming increasingly more prevalent than violence involving Boko Haram outside of Borno State.