They didn’t need to print it on posters or announce it on the radio. The message spread by fire, bullets, and silence from Abuja: “Give them your land — or die.”
During the Buhari years, ordinary Christian farming communities across Nigeria’s Middle Belt and nearly all the southern parts of the country began to feel a dark pressure settling over their villages.
What started as government talk of “grazing routes, ranching solutions and cattle colonies” soon sounded like something far more sinister: a quiet ultimatum that ancestral land must be surrendered to herders.
Officials who should have protected civilians acted as though the dispossessed were the problem. Statements from some Miyetti Allah leaders went unchallenged. The state looked away. And villagers heard the same chilling refrain.
The security operatives have been polarised between their tribes and their loyalty to their country.
The slogan of our forefathers — ONE NIGERIA — has turned to tribal sentiment.
People no longer wear the Nigeria emblem out of loyalty to their fatherland; they see themselves as Yoruba, Igbo or Fulani before they consider themselves Nigerian.
When I was young, we used to send money to Baba Fulani in his “Iga.” He would buy calves and rear them for us, send fresh milk when the cow matured, and later sell the cow and send the proceeds to us in Ibadan. Baba would not cheat us, and we were always waiting for the proceeds of sales during Sallah. This is where I learned integrity in business dealings.
I challenge anyone today to come forward and say they ever had a business dealing with me in which I defaulted. If I am engaged in any business with you, you can be rest assured that your investment is secure.
But the recent generation does not value relationships; they do not know the meaning of integrity. They are after immediate gain. The Fulanis we grew up with were among the most honest people created by Allah, compared to the few bad ones now. Not all Fulani are bandits and heartless terrorists; some of the Fulani I associate with now are intelligent and straightforward.
Those who are supporting banditry and the killing of innocent Nigerians are reaping what they sowed. According to Kawu Baraje, the politicians who brought the killers to our peaceful country are reaping what they sowed. The unity of Nigeria will never disintegrate, but the curse on the killers and their sponsors will always be on them and their children.
The beautiful idea of coexistence has been hijacked by murderous politicians; they don’t have any idea, let alone the capacity, to run it. Their own idea is: “They need land. Give them your land. It is national interest.”
Then came the graves.
The Middle Belt did not imagine the threat — they buried it.
Plateau, April 13, 2015 (Palm Sunday): Christian villages in Barkin Ladi burned. Dozens were murdered. Entire homes erased.
Benue, June 17, 2016 — Yelwata: Mass killings. Markets and homes destroyed. Thousands displaced.
2014–2018: Benue, Taraba, Southern Kaduna — churches burned, villages abandoned, farms seized. Humanitarian reports documented the displacement while the attacks continued.
Then RUGA was announced.
The policy to seize and allocate land for herder settlements felt like confirmation: the dispossession villagers feared was no longer a rumor — it was administrative policy.
They had seen what happened to those who said no.
2011 – Plateau: Mass attacks across Barkin Ladi and Jos South. Villagers whispered the first warnings.
2012 – Southern Kaduna: Night raids. Children fled into the bush barefoot. Families slept ready to run.
2013 – Benue: Farmers who protested land encroachment were killed. A new saying took hold: “No farm today, no village tomorrow.”
2016 – Agatu (Benue): Agatu was emptied. Villages wiped out. Survivors fled to IDP camps, while cattle grazed over the ruins.
2017 – Southern Kaduna: Goska. Godogodo. Kafanchan. Mass burials became routine. Government silence screamed louder than gunfire.
So when Abuja later insisted that land “must be given,” the Middle Belt didn’t argue about the policy theory. They already knew the price of refusal. They had buried their dead.
The slogan did not need to be spoken. It was written in blood.
These are not numbers. They are widows, shattered farms, burned churches, and graves where homes once stood.
Children ask their fathers: “Daddy, where is home now?”
A nation’s heartland was not negotiated away. It was taken by fire. And the silence that followed was not peace — it was surrender.
•Mogaji Arisekola writes from Ibadan.
