Fulani militants world’s fourth deadliest terror group

Global Terrorism Index:

By Musa Umar Bologi
Abuja

Barely 24 hours after President Muhammdu Buhari revealed that 10,000 lives were lost to insurgency owing to MTN’s negligence, the Global Terrorism Index has named the Fulani militant group operating in Nigeria and parts of Central African Republic as the world’s fourth deadliest terrorist group.
According to the GTI report contained in the UK-based Independent, the group is believed to be unknown to the outside world, comprising of individuals from the semi-nomadic pastoral ethnic group, Fula people existing across several West African nations, and has seen a dramatic escalation of its activities in the past year.
The GTI is an attempt to systematically rank the nations of the world according to terrorist activity.

The index combines a number of factors associated with terrorist attacks to build an explicit picture of the impact of terrorism over a 10-year period, illustrating trends, and providing a data series for analysis by researchers and policymakers.
It is the product of Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) and is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, in the United States of America . The GTD has codified over 125,000 cases of terrorism.
Its latest report is coming on the heels of alleged serial killings of the Agatu people in Agatu local government area of Benue state by the Fulani militants. Besides, the group had at different times been alleged to have attacked various communities in some parts of the country.

In the report, the GTI said: “In 2013, the Fulani killed around 80 people in total – but by 2014 the group had killed 1,229. Operating mainly in the middle belt of Nigeria, opposed to the north which is dominated by Boko Haram, the group recorded 847 deaths last year across five states, and has also been known to stage attacks in the Central African Republic (CAR).”
It said: “Little is known about the group, despite the high toll they are inflicting on local civilian populations, but it is supposed the increased instability in CAR and Nigeria, despite some government successes against militant groups, has facilitated the group’s expansion.”

The GTI further observed that “as much as 92 per cent of their attacks target private citizens, reflecting the group’s primary concern over the ownership of farmland. Each attack claims an average of 11 lives, with the largest known in April 2014 killing as many as 200 people after a group of the militants targeted community leaders and residents during a meeting in central province Zamfara.
“In the past year Nigeria has experienced the greatest increase in deaths from terrorism, with 7,512 deaths reported – an increase of over 300 per cent – most of which have been claimed by Boko Haram.”