Nigerian Villages Seized as Armed Groups Move Into Land Now Targeted for Oil Exploration

Three Idoma communities in Benue remain under occupation by armed pastoralist fighters just as companies begin testing for oil, raising fears that displacement could shape future land and resource claims.

We Have Occupied this Land for 40 Generations: Tribal Leader

By Mike Odeh James and Ekani Olikita

(Makurdi) Three Idoma-tribe villages in Benue’s Otukpo County are sitting on what could be an inland oil bonanza, TruthNigeria has learned. As 31 government sanctioned oil companies commence test drilling to determine oil reservoirs deep underground, Idoma elders have concluded that they now know why their land has been under armed occupation since early 2025.

 In July 2026, Nigeria awarded oil exploration rights across the same Otukpo Local Government Area (County).

The occupied villages – Amla, Emichi and Okpomaju – have been Idoma and overwhelmingly Christian for decades. Their people are scattered across Otukpo Icho, Odudaje, Otada and Makurdi, and many say they will not return until Fulani Ethnic Militia attacking them are removed.

“Fulanis have taken over Amla. Their cattle are grazing freely,” Achadu Odumu, who fled and returned hoping to farm, told TruthNigeria.

The occupiers are Fulani armed pastoralist fighters who have emptied farming communities across Nigeria’s Middle Belt for a decade. Displaced residents in four locations gave TruthNigeria the same account: The villages are staging grounds for night-time slaughters.  Captives taken in Otukpo are moved through them before ransom is paid, and raids launched from the same ground.

Neither the Army nor the police have dislodged them. Community leaders’ repeated requests for Police Mobile Force deployments and troops to clear the camps have not been met.

Idoma Leaders Vow To Defend Their Land Rights

“We have been on this land for over forty generations,” Professor Yakubu Ochefu, President-General of Ochetoha K’Idoma, the top Idoma tribal group, told TruthNigeria. “We have nowhere to go, and we are ready to defend every inch of it,” Ochefu said. “How we defend our land is up to the Federal Government, but we shall defend it.”

“We are ready to talk peace. We have all manner of people living in Idoma land — the Tiv, Igala, Jukun, Igbo and Hausa — and we are ready to coexist with them,” he said.

“Wherever large deposits of mineral resources are found, all manner of actors come in and trigger a crisis so that the indigenes leave and the actors gain access,” Ochefu said. “We have known about the existence of oil since 1954.”

“The aim is to force the Idoma off their ancestral lands, occupy them and claim ownership,” David Onyilokwu Idah of the International Human Rights Commission in Abuja told TruthNigeria. “Over time they would become natives of Benue, and then they would start demanding access to the oil.”

“They hope that constant attacks would force the Idoma off the lands,” Idah said. “The ultimate beneficiaries would be the ordinary, simple Fulani herders, who are largely Muslims.”

Those are allegations. TruthNigeria found no evidence connecting any license holder to the men holding the villages.

The men with rifles are not the ones who stay. The settlers are ordinary pastoral herders and their families grazing land whose owners are in internal displacement camps in Makurdi.

Benue Joins Oil map

The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission July 21, 2026 awarded 37 of 50 blocks for exploration in the 2025 licensing round. Three are in the so-called Benue Trough. PPL 800, covering Otukpo and Apa counties, was awarded to Dakoda & U; PPL 801, in the southwestern Benue Trough, was awarded to Eyre Energy; and PPL 902 in Okpokwu was awarded to South-borne Oil and Gas.

Villages across Otukpo and Apa are located above the deposits. Which of those fall inside PPL 800’s mapped boundary has not been established; TruthNigeria confirmed the overlap only at county level.

The acreage is old ground. Shell and TotalEnergies drilled five wells there from 1954, but none developed oil. No reserve figure has been declared, and the awards await signature bonuses and ministerial approval.

 Nigeria has licensed the right only to explore, not to produce.

The Precedent

Idoma leaders point north for the template. The Kachia Grazing Reserve in Kaduna State, known as Ladduga, was created in the 1960s on land ancestrally associated with the Bakulu and Adara. 

It is now a permanent Fulani settlement with its own district head. The Fulani leaders there have pressed for chiefdom and emirate recognition, which is the route to indigenous status. 

The National Ranching Policy Pilot proposed by Development Minister Idi Maiha, has been rejected across the Middle Belt to block the elevation of Fulani settlers to indigenous status. But Benue is on the list for large grazing reserve development.

Fulani terrorists killed sleeping villagers  at Okpomaju in February 2025 and the villages were occupied by mid-2025; the oil-exploration round opened that December.

Fulani pastoralist occupation is under way in other Benue counties: Gwer West, Guma, Agatu, Ukum, Logo and Kwande although none are listed on a petroleum block. Yet, in Otukpo, Apa and Okpokwu there is oil beneath it.

What the Law Allows to Host Communities

Under the Petroleum Industry Act of 2021, communities hosting petroleum operations draw a share of operators’ Capital investment through a Host Communities Development Trust. 

The Act does not make occupation a claim to it. But host-community status is a determination, and if exploration advances while the Idoma tribal members remain displaced, their claim to benefits can be contested.

Dakoda & U, Eyre Energy and South-borne Oil and Gas did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the Commission, the Army or the Benue State government.

Washington has redesignated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for religious freedom violations, and on July 15, 2026 the House voted 217 to 209 to freeze American aid in the fiscal 2027 State Department bill.

The U.S. Congress has framed Benue as a persecution file. It is also a property file. Investors will not touch acreage carrying an unresolved possession claim, and Abuja cannot license land it cannot hold.

The Idoma of Otukpo are not asking Washington for oil revenue, and Washington is not in any position to grant it. They are asking to go home before anyone drills.

Mike Odeh James and Olikita Ekani are conflict reporters for truthNigeria.

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