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Israel has received the latest captive’s body from Hamas in Gaza as part of the ceasefire deal signed four weeks ago. Five more captives’ bodies are believed to remain buried under rubble.

Lagos, Nigeria — When Lawrence Zhongo and his wife got married in 2023, relatives and friends from across their region in central Nigeria attended the ceremony. But in the years since, he has been left distraught time and again with each new report of a deadly attack that has claimed the lives of people who celebrated with the couple.

“I can’t count the number of relatives and friends I have lost. My wife lost eight relatives in the Ziki attack in April,” Zhongo, a yam and maize farmer in Miango village in Plateau State, told Al Jazeera. “These are people that came for my wedding.”

In that attack, armed men stormed into homes in Zike village in the Bassa local government area, in overnight raids that reports said killed more than 50 people, including children. Days earlier, 40 people were reportedly killed in a similar attack in the Bokkos local government area.

For decades, Nigeria’s middle belt or central region has been the site of deadly communal violence between usually Muslim Fulani pastoral herders and the majority Christian farmers of various ethnicities, whom experts say are clashing over competition for resources.

At the same time, in northern Nigeria, Boko Haram and other ISIL (ISIS)-affiliated armed groups have launched deadly attacks for more than a decade, killing thousands and forcing hundreds of thousands to be displaced, as the groups attempt to impose harsh interpretations of Islamic law in the country’s mainly Muslim north.

Though the victims of violence are from different cultures and religions, the attacks have led to United States President Donald Trump threatening to invade Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” over what right-wing lawmakers in the US allege is a “Christian genocide“.

“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform last Saturday. “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

He said if Nigeria continues to allow the killings of Christians, the US would cease all aid and assistance to the country and would use military action to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities”.

Subsequently, the US Department of State on Monday designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). The list, featuring countries such as China, India, and Russia, includes states engaged in severe violations of religious freedom. Nigeria is no stranger to it, as it was a CPC during Trump’s first term, a designation that was reversed under President Joe Biden.

This week’s move comes after months of effort by US Senator Ted Cruz, who has been trying to rally fellow evangelical Christians to buy into the agenda, saying in October that Nigeria’s government is enabling a “massacre” against Christians.

Abuja, however, has vocally refuted the US claims, and so have many Nigerians.

“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians,” said Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, in response to the US claims.

At the same time, in the north-central region, which is the epicentre of the communal violence, even the victims who are angry at the government do not want US intervention.

‘We blame the government’

Zhongo, the farmer, says he is traumatised by the loss of his friends and relatives in attacks that have escalated in recent years.

“We have a failed [security] system, and we blame the government,” the 39-year-old said, adding that he has more or less given up on the authorities’ ability or willingness to stop the communal attacks and those carried out by armed groups.

At least 1,207 people have been killed in Miango since 2001, according to local figures, with hundreds of people injured.

Due to the violence, Miango’s residents have not been able to go to their farms, where armed men continue to attack and kill people. Zhongo said some families in the village are starving as a result.

Yet, Zhongo, who is Christian, does not see the crisis as merely a one-sided war in which only people of one religion are targeted.

“I will never deny that Muslims are also killed in the attacks. There are Muslims and other Fulanis who have been affected. I remembered when they killed some Fulani leaders,” Zhongo said.

Ali Tiga is a former Muslim who converted to Christianity.

He says he still cannot forget the day last year when he received a call saying his sister-in-law had been killed. He was attending a wedding ceremony in another town and had to rush back home.

“My brother’s pregnant wife was killed, her stomach dissected and the foetus removed,” the secondary school civic education teacher told Al Jazeera. “I have lost three friends and five relatives in the last three years, some of them were killed in their farms and homes.”

Tiga also acknowledges that there has been death and tragedy on all sides.

Fulani herder Aliyu, who gave Al Jazeera only his first name for security reasons, is one of the numerous Muslims who have suffered as a result of the escalating attacks.

He said attackers often lie in ambush in the grazing areas, and when herders enter the area, they open fire on them and their cattle, resulting in the loss of cows and sometimes human lives.

“I have lost my brothers to these attacks, I have lost cows too,” he said.

But loss of life is not the only loss Aliyu faces. He has lost friendships, he laments.

The relationships between his tribe and the Christian tribes have become polarised, he says.

“One thing that saddens me is that when we were growing up, we grew up together – Christians and Muslims attended the same schools and we celebrated Christmas and Sallah together. As a Muslim now, there are some Christian communities where I can’t step my foot.”

A multilayered crisis

Nigeria is a secular country of 220 million people where the population is nearly evenly divided between Christians, who make up 45 percent, and Muslims, who constitute about 53 percent. It comprises more than 250 ethnic groups, and the middle belt region reflects this ethnic diversity the most.

Trump’s call for intervention has roused continuing conversation in Nigeria about the insecurity and loss of lives across all regions, as well as the government’s seeming complacency in reining in the activities of armed actors.

As part of the government’s plan to ease farmer-herder tensions, national authorities launched a ten-year National Livestock Transformation Plan in 2019 to stop herders and their cattle encroaching on farms and to modernise the livestock sectors by adopting cattle ranching. Some state governments also introduced anti-grazing laws. But experts have noted that implementation of the plan faced significant challenges, such as inadequate political leadership, delays, funding uncertainties and a lack of expertise. In tackling the violence, Nigeria’s military has also launched operations to flush out attackers – but these have been criticised for ineffectiveness and apparent bias.

Armed groups have plagued Nigeria since 2009, but the crisis in the north came into international prominence after Boko Haram, a group known for its anti-Western education ideologies, kidnapped 276 girls from a boarding school in Chibok in 2014, triggering global outrage.

For the past decade, the crisis in the mainly Muslim north has escalated, with groups including the ISIL affiliate in West Africa Province (ISWAP), Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS), Lakurawa, and marauding bandits gaining ground. Meanwhile, other regions of Nigeria have also seen violent attacks increase.

Yet the farmer-herder violence in the middle belt is arguably Nigeria’s most vicious security threat, said to be six times deadlier than Boko Haram’s armed rebellion, according to the think tank, Crisis Group.

It has displaced entire communities, caused loss of lives and properties, and directly contributed to Nigeria’s food shortages emergency because farmers are unable to access their farms. Since 2020, more than 1,300 people have been killed as a result of the violence, according to a 2024 report by Lagos-based sociopolitical risk advisory firm SBM Intelligence.

Experts say what Trump interprets as the mass killing of Christians is in fact a multilayered crisis that affects many groups.

“There is no such thing as a Christian genocide in Nigeria, but that does not mean there are no Christians killed or those targeted because of their faith,” said Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at advocacy nonprofit, Good Governance Africa, who added that armed groups like ISWAP, for example, do target Christians.

Amaka Anku, the head of Africa practice at political risk consultancy, Eurasia Group, said similar attacks occur in the northwest, where the attackers, bandits, and the farmers happen to be predominantly Muslims.

“What is true about all of [the attacks] is that the Nigerian government is not effective in protecting lives, has not been effective in arresting and prosecuting these criminal perpetrators. But that is the case for both Muslims and Christians,” she said.

Experts say it is easy to paint the issue with the brush of religion, as many armed militias are largely Muslim and attack Christian-dominated communities.

However, in the fertile middle belt region where herders and farmers have longstanding tensions over resources, analysts say the root of the violence can be linked more to dwindling access to things like arable land and water because of climate change and population growth.

Nevertheless, a lax security response, porous borders, and the inability of the authorities to bring perpetrators to justice in the face of a worsening crisis have led to accusations of collusion and the loss of faith in state institutions, analysts said.

“When the government fails to protect people who have been attacked several times over the years, of course they will accuse the government and security forces of collusion,” said researcher Samuel. “The lack of political will is what has made insecurity drag [on] for this long. The first responsibility of the government is [the] protection of lives and properties.”

Need for local solutions

Trump’s call for US intervention has not brought enthusiasm among those who are directly affected. Instead, Nigerians are worried it might exacerbate the situation, especially in a complex crisis where perpetrators live close to the community.

“We hope that Tinubu can come up with a strategy to use internal forces to fight the terrorists and not invite external forces; it is going to be a shameful thing,” said Zhongo.

In the capital, Abuja, Nigerians are also concerned about how Trump’s threats might affect the country.

Funmilayo Obasa, 25, closely watches the news, fearing US military action would worsen the humanitarian and displacement crises in Nigeria’s north, where hundreds of thousands of people are presently displaced.

“They might end up killing more people than the terrorists have, and that will definitely worsen the situation,” she said.

Abuja said on Monday that it would welcome US military assistance as long as it recognises Nigeria’s territorial sovereignty.

“Nigeria and the US military already have cooperation, and you could see a situation where they work in conjunction with the Nigerian military,” risk analyst Anku explained, but US military action would not work with bandits and herders who are civilians and live close by or even within the communities that are being affected by violence.

The best solution is a local one, according to Anku, who said Abuja needs to do a better job of prosecuting perpetrators of violence – no matter who they are – which is tied to better intelligence gathering and efficient policing.

Nigeria also needs to strengthen its community conflict monitoring, said Olajumoke Ayandele, an assistant professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and an advisory board member at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) Project.

“The way to do this is supporting community-based early warning mechanisms that empower local actors so that they’re able to detect and are able to address these tensions before they escalate,” she said.

Scaling up interfaith mediation and community mediation programmes, which are at present in place in small pockets in parts of the northeastern states of Yobe and Gombe, will also help, she added.

“It will be very effective when we’re thinking about post-conflict reconciliation processes, so that we can know that a lot of these issues that we are trying to tackle are being addressed without exacerbating the grievances that even cause them.”

Military deployment, Ayandele said, has to be paired with human rights safeguards, so that immediate threats are addressed without deepening existing tensions or alienating the communities that need protection.

To effectively deal with the security threats, researcher Samuel said the governance issues leading to problems such as unemployment, lack of basic infrastructure, and poverty must be resolved first.

“You can deploy all the security forces in the world; they can crush these guys, but tomorrow another group would come up unless you address the drivers of insecurity,” he said.

Meanwhile, back in Miango, Zhongo is still reeling from all the loss he and his family have faced. He is fed up with the killings and hopeful for a Nigerian government-led intervention that will not deepen existing crises.

“The Nigerian government is enough if they are willing to fight these terrorists,” he said.