The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has acknowledged in a new report that violent attacks by Fulani militant groups in Nigeria were not driven by religion alone but by overlapping motives including land competition, poverty, criminal enterprise, and environmental pressures, even as it documented devastating consequences for both Christian and Muslim communities in the affected regions.

The May 2026 report, titled “Non-State Violators of Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Fulani Militants,” said violence by Fulani militants had caused the highest number of deaths among all religious communities in Nigeria over the preceding year, surpassing casualties from both organized insurgent groups and criminal gangs. It confirmed that at least 1.3 million Nigerians had been displaced from the Middle Belt into overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe displacement camps as a result of militant attacks and land invasions.

The commission said armed actors from a Fulani ethnic background had perpetrated some of the most visible and deadly attacks on religious communities, often but not exclusively targeting Christians. However, it emphasized that Muslim communities had also suffered, with Fulani assailants raiding other herders’ cattle and violently attacking non-Fulani Muslim communities. The report documented multiple attacks in Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, Niger, and Zamfara states involving killings, kidnappings, and raids on churches, mosques, and rural communities.

The USCIRF said militant actors had sometimes deliberately timed operations around Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter to maximize psychological impact and deter communities from gathering for worship or celebration.

The commission warned against interpreting the violence through a single lens, saying both those who viewed it as a concerted campaign of religious genocide against non-Muslims and those who emphasized only land competition and environmental factors were presenting incomplete pictures. It said multiple and overlapping factors, including religion in many cases, likely drove militants to attack specific communities or individuals.

Despite recent security interventions and bilateral discussions between Nigeria and the United States, the report said violent incursions into farming communities, kidnappings, and attacks on religious sites continued, leaving central Nigeria in what it described as an intense, daily, and seemingly perpetual crisis of insecurity.