Jalingo, March 21, 2026
In the villages of Maihuda and Tordamisa, something quiet but significant is happening. Farmers and herders — communities that have buried their dead after decades of deadly clashes — are sitting together to talk.
After years of violence that has claimed thousands of lives and destroyed livelihoods across Taraba State, local communities are no longer waiting for government to bring peace. They are building it themselves.
A Crisis Measured in Lives and Harvests
The scale of destruction from Nigeria's farmer-herder conflict is staggering. According to Amnesty International, at least 3,641 people were killed across the country in farmer-herder clashes between January 2016 and October 2018 alone, with over 2,000 of those deaths recorded in 2018. Taraba State was among the worst affected, including the 2018 violence in Lau Local Government Area that killed approximately 73 people and razed dozens of villages.
The conflict has multiple drivers — historical ethnic tensions, competition for land, weak justice systems, and governance failures. But experts increasingly point to climate change as a critical aggravating force. Erratic rainfall, prolonged dry spells, advancing desertification in northern grazing areas, and disrupted seasonal migration are pushing herders further south into Taraba's farmlands, earlier in the year and for longer periods. The result is an intensifying collision over shrinking resources that no fence or patrol can fully contain.
Farmers and Herders Choose Dialogue
In Maihuda community, Bali Local Government Area, farmers and herders have established a peace committee dedicated to promoting coexistence and managing disputes before they turn violent.
At the committee's inauguration, the leader of the Fulani community in Taraba State, Mafindi Umaru Danburam, commended the grassroots initiative and outlined the committee's core mandate: mediation, early reporting of incidents, and ensuring accountability when rights are violated.
"When communities take ownership of peace, it lasts longer than any agreement signed in a government office," Danburam said.
Across the state in Tordamisa, Donga Local Government Area, a similar committee has taken shape. At a community meeting, Zaki Teh Tiv, a prominent leader among the Tiv people in Taraba, urged residents to act early — reporting tensions before they escalate into bloodshed.
"We have seen what late intervention looks like. It looks like funerals," he said. "We must report, we must talk, before we reach that point."
Government Welcomes Grassroots Action
The Special Adviser to Governor Agbu Kefas on Farmer-Herder Relations, Bello Mbela, welcomed the community-led committees, describing them as a critical complement to state-level efforts.
Mbela identified a structural gap that these committees directly address: the absence of trusted local actors in rural communities capable of detecting tension early and responding before violence erupts.
"One major reason this crisis has persisted is that early warning stops at the local government level. It never reaches the village. These committees change that," he said.
Climate Adaptation as Peacebuilding
For the peace committees to succeed over the long term, experts and community leaders say structural support is essential — including training in conflict mediation, access to early warning information on weather patterns and herder movements, the establishment of designated grazing reserves and stock routes, and the promotion of climate-smart agricultural practices such as irrigation and drought-resistant crops.
This last point is increasingly urgent. As long as climate change continues to compress grazing seasons and shrink available land, the pressure that drives herders onto farmlands will persist regardless of how many committees are formed.
In Taraba State, the communities of Maihuda and Tordamisa understand this. They are not naive about the scale of what they face. But they have chosen, against considerable odds, to try.
As COP31 approaches in Antalya later this year, their quiet efforts serve as a reminder that climate adaptation and conflict prevention are not separate challenges. In the Middle Belt of Nigeria, they are the same fight.
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