Post falsely links Nigerian militants' 2015 terror index ranking to Trump

“BREAKING NEWS DONALD TRUMP HIT§§ NORTHERN NIGERIA DECLARE FULANI H€RD§§MEN A T€RRORI§§T GROUP;- PAN!!C IN THE NORTH....(sic),” reads the caption of a Facebook post published on March 8, 2025.

Shared more than 200 times, the 20-minute clip in the post features several men discussing their views on the designation of Nigerian Fulani herdsmen as the world’s fourth deadliest terrorist group – supposedly by Trump.

“Breaking news from the US. Donald Trump has finally designated Fulani herdsmen as the 4th most terrorist group in the world (sic),” says a man who speaks behind the camera, adding that it means “we are expecting any time from now an airstrike on Fulani herdsmen”.

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Screenshot showing the false post, taken March 18, 2025

The video also features images of Trump, Boko Haram militants, and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. 

In the left corner of the screen are two screenshots of headlines: “Global Terrorism Index: Nigerian Fulani militants named as fourth deadliest terror group in world” and “Report: Fulani Herdsmen Killed 2,539 Nigerians in 654 Attacks.” 

Comments under the Facebook post indicate that many people appear to believe the claim that Trump has designated Fulani herdsmen as the world’s fourth most dangerous terrorist group.

Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria 

In Nigeria, conflicts between Fulani herders and farmers have resulted in significant casualties. 

The conflict between the parties is primarily driven by intense competition over fertile land and water resources (archived here).

As the population grows, the demand for arable land increases, leading to encroachment on traditional grazing reserves. 

This encroachment has heightened tensions between sedentary farming communities and nomadic herders, resulting in violent clashes that have claimed thousands of lives (archived here).

Environmental factors further exacerbate these conflicts. Desertification and soil degradation in northern regions have compelled Fulani herders to migrate southward in search of grazing land.

However, the claim that Trump designated the Fulani herders as the world’s fourth most dangerous terrorist group is false.

Unrelated ranking

AFP Fact Check conducted searches for the headlines in the screenshots seen in the video.

We found the first headline, “Global Terrorism Index: Nigerian Fulani militants named as fourth deadliest terror group in world,” in a November 2015 article published by the British newspaper The Independent (archived here). 

The article described the 2015 edition of a ranking called the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), which is put out by the Institute for Economics and Peace, an international think tank headquartered in Australia. The index ranks the world’s top five most deadly groups. 

AFP Fact Check reviewed the GTI 2015 index and found that it indeed ranked Nigerian Fulani militants as the fourth deadliest terror group, based on data from the previous year (archived here). 

In the 2015 GTI index, Boko Haram was ranked first, followed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in second place and the Taliban in third. 

According to the report, “the fourth most deadly terrorist group of 2014, Fulani militants, has never previously featured among the most deadly terrorist groups. The death toll of the Fulani militants [...] jumped to 1,229 people compared to 63 in 2013”. 

Since 2015, Fulani militants have not featured in the GTI index, which only lists the top five deadliest groups. However, in subsequent reports, Fulani extremists were noted as continuing to contribute to terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria, notably in the think tank’s 2019 report which said that Fulani extremist-linked fatalities surged by 261 percent in a year due to escalating pastoralist clashes (archived here).

AFP Fact Check also tracked down the other headline seen in the video (“Report: Fulani Herdsmen Killed 2,539 Nigerians in 654 Attacks”).

This led to a story by Nigerian-based news website ThisDay, published on June 7, 2020, with the same headline (archived here).

According to ThisDay, the figures came from a report authored by Belgium-based independent analyst José Luis Bazán. 

Bazán explained in a TV interview that he compiled these statistics using media reports (archived here).

No Trump statement

No Fulani groups are included on the United States’ list of designated foreign terrorist organisations (archived here).  

Meanwhile, Trump has not made any public statements about designating any Fulani groups as a terrorist organisation, nor about Fulani herders being the world’s fourth most dangerous terrorist group. 

Since his return to the Oval Office in January 2025, Trump has signed two executive orders (see here and here) in which he designated several groups as foreign terrorist organisations (archived here and here).

He named these groups as Ansar Allah (Huthi rebel forces in Yemen), the El Salvadorian gang MS-13, and the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Nowhere in these orders did he mention any Fulani groups.