On 30 August, foreign secretary Boris Johnson and international development secretary Priti Patel visited Nigeria to assess British assistance in the fight against the Islamic terror group Boko Haram. A Nigerian special adviser on religious affairs, Canon Nenman Gowon, said, ‘While the attention of the British government and other international development agencies is turned to the devastation caused by Boko Haram in the northeast, very little or nothing is even mentioned about the hundreds of villages and people killed by the Islamic Fulani cattle herders who are still prowling Plateau, Adamawa, Taraba, and other states.’ The adviser blamed the president for turning a blind eye to the crises in Nigeria’s middle belt, ‘because it is a predominantly Christian region and the Fulani Muslims are of the president’s tribe’.