55,910 deaths were recorded in Nigeria during a comprehensive four-year study from October 2019 to September 2023, a new study by researchers from the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) has said.
The report by OFRA an organization that monitors religious freedoms and documents violations of rights across Nigeria revealed that peace advocates like Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam recognize this as a component of a larger strategy to destabilize and terrorize vulnerable groups.
The study showed that violence occurred mostly in the North Central Zone and Southern Kaduna, where widespread mass killings, abductions, and family torture are reported to occur with minimal intervention from security forces.
The report, according to a statement on Thursday, August 29 by Frans Vierhout, a Data Scientist at ORFA, identified the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) as a key perpetrator of violence in Nigeria.
The report says military resources are concentrated in the North-East and North-West of Nigeria, 100 miles from the scenes of the FEM atrocities.
The statement said, “Across the country, over 11,000 incidents of extreme violence took place during the data period, with more than 55,000 killings and 21,000 abductions. In the North Central zone alone, 3,007 incidents of extreme violence occurred. 2,010 incidents involved killings, 700 were abduction incidents, and 297 were a combination of killings and abductions.”
“The Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) killed at least 42 per cent of all civilians, while Boko Haram and ISWAP (‘Islamic State West Africa Province’) combined killed 10.percent FEM, an ethnoreligious terror group, is considered by many security experts to be a ‘twin’ of Islamists killing and kidnapping civilians in Northern Nigeria. Land-based community attacks form the largest category of civilian killings (81 per cent).
“FEM invade small Christian farming settlements to kill, rape, abduct, and burn homes. 2.7 Christians were killed for every Muslim in the reporting period. Islamist extremists kill both Muslims and Christians. Although Christian death tolls are far higher. Proportional loss: In states where attacks occur, proportional loss to Christian communities is exceptionally high. In terms of state populations, 6.5 times as many Christians are being murdered as Muslims.”
The report also said that the ORFA data revealed that abductions increased during the four years.
The statistics indicated that 1,665 people were abducted in 2020, 5,907 in 2021, 7,705 in 2022, and 6,255 in 2023.
The study also showed that Christians are 1.4 times more likely to be abducted than Muslims, with an estimated 5.1 Christians abducted for every Muslim within local populations.
This pattern, the research said, underscores the targeted nature of these kidnappings, especially by the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM), which often focuses on Christian communities.