Nigeria's Farmers Face Rising Attacks Amid Land Disputes

0:01Today on State of the World, in Nigeria, farmers and herders battle each other for land. You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. I'm Christine Arismeth. Central Nigeria is blessed with fertile land, but the struggle over who gets to use that land is complex, and it's become increasingly violent. In June, more than 160 people were killed in one farming village. The suspects are herders accused by farming communities of a deadly campaign to drive them from their farms. NPR's Emanuel Akinwotu takes us to the village still reeling from the killings.

0:49And a quick warning, this story includes descriptions of violence. A cluster of chicks dart through rice crops at a farm in Yalwata, a predominantly Christian village in Nigeria's central state of Benue, known as the country's bread basket. Dotted across acres of farmland are brick homes, huts and barns that have been destroyed. 45-year-old farmer Tehemba Lomba weeps outside what's left of his home. The brick walls have caved in, the metal roof torched, the floor covered in ash. He lost eight members of his family, including three of his children. They were among more than 160 people killed here in mid-June.

1:32The attackers set fire to his house while his family hid in a bedroom Seven of them were burnt alive, he says His brother was found shot dead The attackers also torched his storehouse just a few yards away from his home Filled with his sacks of rice, beans and yams Almost all the crops were destroyed But Lomba's family are trying to salvage what they can They crouch on a mud path outside and wash bowls of rice-charred black moving the clean grains onto trays laid out on the ground. Nearby in the village, other survivors searched through the debris. Dried pools of blood soaked the ground of a small transport union office in the village.

2:14We're led inside by 35-year-old Matthias Zay, to where his brother Elijah was hacked with machetes. Is this where he found his body? Yes, this is where I found his body. Like virtually everyone in Yalwata, Zay is a Christian. He was hiding in the nearby St. Joseph's Catholic Church with several others. Then he went to find his brother. And when I came, I saw him on the floor with wounds and then blood everywhere. He was still breathing. He rushed him to the hospital, but before they arrived, he died. The identities of the attackers are unknown, but they're widely believed by police to be herders or militants from the Fulani ethnic group, who are mostly Muslim.

2:54Disputes between herders and farmers are common in Nigeria, and the Sahel region in Africa, where pressures on land have become intense, in part due to climate change and population growth. Farmers often accuse herders of grazing cattle on their crops. Herders bemoan that private farms and urban development have expanded, shrinking available land to graze. But what used to be locally resolved disputes has evolved into a wave of mass killings in farming communities like Yawata. In a statement, a group representing Nigeria's herders say they seek peaceful coexistence and condemn the recent killings.

3:29But the Miyeti Ala Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria also said that Fulani herders are themselves often profiled, robbed and killed and said that more than 500 herders have been killed in the past year and thousands of their cattle stolen. However, here in Benue, farming communities say these attacks are not tit-for-tat violence, but part of a pattern. If you want to kill a people, then you must be interested in what they have and we believe that it's the land. Professor James Ayatze is the Tor Tiv, a traditional monarch and the head of the Tiv people, the dominant ethnic group in Benue. He said the massacres are driving farming communities away from their land and then herders arrive free to graze their cattle.

4:12Close to 500 ,000 people in Benue have been displaced by the violence, most from rural villages that are now too dangerous to return to. Groups of young men are still pouring through destroyed homes where entire families were killed. We've stepped into a brick house in Yelwata community that has been burnt down. They were rice farmers and you can see rice charred black scattered all across the floor. And it reeks. There are flies everywhere. You can see human remains. While villagers clear the damage, the lasting effects of the violence are visible in the nearby hospitals.

4:59At a paediatric ward, about a dozen children, some under a year old, are receiving treatment, their small limbs and arms in bandages. Four-year-old Onyusso is among them, with cuts to his arm and ankle.

5:16He's engrossed in a comedy show he's watching on his grandmother's phone. She's 62-year-old Felicia David. Speaking in TIB, she says her daughter Martina and her son-in-law were killed. Onyuso was with his mum when she was hacked to death in front of him, while his dad was shot outside their home. She says he's been crying, asking for his dad to come and see him. And she doesn't know how to tell Onyuso that he's gone. Emmanuel Akinwatu, NPR News, Benway.

5:52That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.