Thousands of Arab Nomads Ordered to Leave Niger

Several thousand Arab nomads from the Mahamid tribe, who have lived for decades in southeastern Niger, have been told to leave the country by the end of the year, local authorities said Sunday.

Niger’s military regime has accused the Mahamid of supplying weapons and logistics to Boko Haram terrorists active in the region.

“This is a very firm directive from the country’s highest authorities: the Mahamid must return home by December 31, 2026 — a strict deadline,” a senior official in Niger’s Diffa region told AFP.

The Diffa region, a primary settlement for the nomadic community, has been hit by jihadist violence from Boko Haram and its rival faction ISWAP for more than a decade.

Governor General Mahamadou Ibrahim Bagadoma gave the military ultimatum to Mahamid representatives at a meeting on November 8, said a municipal official who was present.

In April, in a message addressed to governors in Diffa and neighbouring Zinder, Niger’s interior ministry activated an expulsion plan, citing “serious security consequences resulting from the irregular settlement of the Mahamid”.

The ministry asked governors to “carry out an exhaustive identification of the Mahamid” to “systematically withdraw (their) Nigerien civil status documents — national identity card, passports”.

It also told them “to organise their repatriation to their country of origin” and to “prevent their return” to Niger.

“Seizures of weapons and various pieces of intelligence gathered from 2023 to 2026 point to the alleged involvement of certain individuals from the Mahamid community in supplying terrorist groups in the Lake Chad Basin with arms, ammunition and other logistical resources,” Bagadoma said in August.

Last month, the authorities also ordered the closure of schools and drinking-water wells created by the state but used exclusively by Mahamid communities “to the detriment of the indigenous population”.

On Sunday, a municipal official in the Diffa region confirmed to AFP that the schools in question had been closed and the water pumps removed.

Local officials would no longer deliver identity papers to the Mahamid, and if they were found carrying such documents when stopped at security checks, they would be confiscated, he added.

The first wave of nomads arrived in Niger at the start of the 1970s, fleeing a devastating drought in their native Abeche region in eastern Chad.

They were followed by groups escaping conflicts in Chad and neighbouring Sudan.

But the scarcity of pasture and water, and the growth in livestock numbers — especially camels owned by the Mahamid — have led to sometimes deadly clashes with local people.

Peace deals signed, notably in 2018, have not been enough to lower tensions.