Taraba Communities Are Choosing Words Over Weapons
The echoes of gunfire still haunt Abdullahi Wakili. What he remembers most, however, is the silence that followed — the silence of neighbours fleeing through the night, of homes left smouldering, of fear settling over Lau like harmattan dust.
“We were always expecting a crisis at any moment. We could not sleep with both eyes closed,” the 60-year-old resident said.
Lau, a farming community in Taraba State, northeastern Nigeria, is home to the Yandang people who, for years, were caught in recurring clashes with nomadic herders. In July 2018, violence erupted again, claiming at least 73 lives on both sides. Dozens of houses were torched, farmlands were razed, and families were displaced from communities such as Katibu, Didango, Katara, Sabon Gida, Shomo Sarki, and Nanzo.
“It was the most devastating,” Abdullahi said.
The crisis destroyed livelihoods built over generations. The fertile lands that once yielded yams and rice, supported fishing, and provided pasture for cattle, became battlefields.
Abdullahi, a Yandang indigene married to a Fulani woman, said the two groups had coexisted peacefully for decades before destruction of farms, cattle rustling, and revenge attacks tore them apart. “We used to share everything,” he said. “But the crisis turned us into enemies overnight.”
For generations, Taraba’s plains were a meeting point between settled farmers and herders moving south from the Sahel in search of pasture. These groups lived in relative harmony, guided by informal agreements that allowed seasonal grazing after harvest and mutual access to water. But as population pressures, desertification, and the expansion of farms increased competition for land, old alliances frayed. By the 1990s, the breakdown of traditional mediation systems and the influx of small arms turned ordinary disputes into recurring cycles of revenge.
Political manipulation and the proliferation of small arms after decades of communal unrest in the region further deepened distrust. What were once local disputes over damaged crops or stolen cattle gradually escalated into organised violence involving armed individuals and retaliatory attacks.
By 2018, when violence returned to Lau, the conflict had become part of a larger regional crisis stretching across Adamawa, Benue, Plateau, and Nasarawa states.
A turning point
Five years later, in 2023, Search for Common Ground (SCFG), a non-profit founded in 1982, launched the second phase of its Contributing to the Mitigation of Conflict over Natural Resources project (COMITAS II), in collaboration with the European Union.
Running from January 2023 to July 2024, the initiative targeted conflict-affected communities in Taraba and Adamawa states. Its aim was simple yet ambitious: to rebuild trust, promote dialogue, and empower communities to prevent disputes before they turned violent.
COMITAS II also reached Taraba’s Lau and Zing local government areas, another hotspot where farming communities along the international cattle route to Cameroon had experienced repeated clashes.
Through stakeholder meetings, training sessions on early warning and conflict sensitivity, and community-produced radio dramas and jingles, the project re-ignited conversations about peace. Over 60 media practitioners and advocates were trained across 32 communities in both states, resulting in the de-escalation of several potential violent incidents through verified reporting and community dialogue in the past year.
Wesley Daniel, a community leader who is part of the initiative, said the tensions and attacks have reduced. “We now have structures that encourage people to talk instead of fight,” he noted.
Before, even a rumour could spark bloodshed. But now, trained youths use social media, radio, and town-hall discussions to dispel misinformation before tensions escalate.
Berry Cletus, a COMITAS II Media Fellow in Lau, remembered one incident where a rumour spread that a cow belonging to a herder had been stolen. “Instead of waiting for violence, trained youths acted fast. They verified the information, shared the truth on local radio, and linked both communities for dialogue,” Berry told HumAngle.
To sustain this new culture of communication, SFCG established Community Security Architecture Dialogues (CSADs) at the local government level and Community Response Networks (CRNs) in villages. These structures identify warning signs early, mediate disputes, and link residents to security agencies.
In Zing, a potentially violent eviction attempt by locals was averted after intervention by the CRN. “Our awareness campaigns are restoring trust,” said Kauna Mathias David, a CSAD member. “Before, truck drivers feared using our roads because of theft. Now they travel freely.”
Progress and its fragility
While peace is returning, it remains delicate. Decades of mistrust cannot vanish overnight. Violence still flares in other parts of Taraba and across the region.
Sustainability is also a concern. When the two-year COMITAS II project ended, communities like Lau and Zing struggled to keep peace activities running.
Poor transport and communication sometimes delay reports of early warning signs, weakening response efforts. And although the project was formally handed over to the Taraba State Government, only Karim Lamido Local Government has replicated its peace structure. “Other councils are yet to follow,” lamented Wesley.
Still, the lessons are taking root. In Lau and Zing, residents who spoke to HumAngle said farmers and herders are discovering that peace is not the absence of conflict—it is the presence of dialogue, trust, and shared responsibility.
Mamuda Umar, a local herder, said people have realised that violence solves nothing. “We now prefer dialogue,” he said. “It’s not always easy, but it brings lasting peace.”
Mamuda survived one of the clashes in 2018. Photo: Shawanatu Ishaka/HumAngle
He added that many herders have begun farming, and relations between the groups are improving. “Whenever misunderstandings arise, traditional leaders call meetings for both sides to talk. Each meeting brings a better understanding.”
Even intermarriages, once unthinkable, are gradually becoming accepted. “In the past, a farmer could never seek the hand of a herder’s daughter,” Mamuda recalled. “But things are changing now. We even give our daughters to them in marriage.”
For some Taraba communities, once defined by deadly farmer–herder clashes, this is more than a project—it is the slow rewriting of history, from a narrative of loss to one of coexistence and hope.
But peace here is not a finished story. It lives in the conversations held beneath mango trees, in the cautious laughter of children returning to rebuilt schools, and in the quiet courage of people like Abdullahi who still remember the silence after the gunfire — and choose, every day, to break it with dialogue instead.
This story was produced under the HumAngle Foundation’s Advancing Peace and Security through Journalism project, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).