- The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) has strongly distanced the Fulani ethnic group from armed criminality, asserting that thousands of active bandits do not speak for the millions of peaceful Fulani citizens in the country.
- The association highlighted that law-abiding herders routinely bear the brunt of local insecurity, frequently falling victim to cattle rustling, mass abductions, and retaliatory violence executed by criminal syndicates.
- In a bid to root out criminal elements hiding in forests and borderlands, MACBAN has directed its state branches to formalize and deepen intelligence-sharing networks with traditional rulers and federal security forces.
The Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) has officially distanced the broader Fulani community from criminal networks operating within the country, clarifying that the estimated 30,000 armed militants active across Nigeria do not represent the nation’s 14.5 million Fulani citizens.
Eko Hot Blog reports that the reaction follows a brief published by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USVIRF), which stated that roughly 30,000 armed Fulani militants, operating in tactical units ranging from 10 to 1,000 members, have emerged as some of the deadliest non-state actors driving severe religious freedom violations nationwide.
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In a statement released on Friday, May 29, 2026, MACBAN National President Baba Ngelzarma firmly rejected the collective stigmatization of the ethnic group, emphasizing that criminal elements should not be used to define a peaceful majority.
According to the pastoralist association, law-abiding herders are themselves primary victims of these armed syndicates, frequently suffering massive losses from unchecked cattle rustling, targeted kidnappings, and cycles of retaliatory violence.
Ngelzarma explicitly stated that MACBAN will neither shield, tolerate, nor manufacture excuses for any individual or group engaged in violent criminality, regardless of their ethnic background or religious affiliation.
To demonstrate this commitment, the leadership has issued clear directives to all its zonal and state branches to formalize and scale up closed-door intelligence-sharing operations alongside federal law enforcement agencies and local traditional rulers to help track, isolate, and flush out criminals utilizing forests and border regions as operational cover.
MACBAN strongly condemned terrorism, banditry, and targeted executions across Nigeria, warning that aggressive ethnic profiling by the public, security agencies, and the media could severely derail ongoing counter-insurgency operations and fracture national cohesion.
The body maintained that lasting regional peace can only be established through a balanced framework of justice, mutual dialogue, inter-agency security cooperation, and targeted economic re-engineering.
To permanently mitigate the recurring communal frictions tied to open grazing, the association called upon the Federal Government of Nigeria and its international development partners to systematically fund and support ongoing initiatives aimed at modernizing domestic livestock production through ranching infrastructure.
