Gunmen kill dozens in central Nigeria

Gunmen killed at least 56 people earlier this week in central Nigeria’s Benue state, the governor’s office said Saturday, sharply revising a previous toll of 17.

Clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farmers over land use are common in central Nigeria. Governor Hyacinth Alia had earlier blamed the attacks in the Ukum and Logo local government areas on “suspected herdsmen”.

With many herders belonging to the Muslim Fulani ethnic group, and many farmers Christian, the attacks in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt often take on a religious or ethnic dimension. Two attacks by unidentified gunmen earlier this month in neighbouring Plateau state left more than 100 people dead.

“The death toll has jumped to 56 from the attacks as at the last count,” Solomon Iorpev, the governor’s media advisor, told AFP following Alia’s visit to the scene.

That figure could rise as search-and-rescue operations continue, he added.

The attacks happened Thursday night into Friday, sparking the deployment of security forces.

The government-owned News Agency of Nigeria reported over the weekend that the country’s defence minister was visiting Plateau state.

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Back-to-back massacres — more than 50 people killed in two districts — in Plateau state this month have marked a serious escalation in the state, with authorities scrambling to contain the attacks in a region where ethnic tensions have long simmered.

Plateau state authorities have claimed the killings were part of a “genocide” that was “sponsored by terrorists”.

Critics say that rhetoric masks the true causes of the conflict — disputes over land and a failure by authorities and police to govern the countryside.

A local herder group denounced the Plateau state killings while also noting that its own members have been under attack by farmers.

Land grabbing, political and economic tensions between local “indigenes” and those considered outsiders, as well as an influx of hardline Muslim and Christian preachers, have heightened divisions in Plateau state in recent decades.

When violence flares, weak policing all but guarantees indiscriminate reprisal attacks.

Across the wider Middle Belt, including in Benue, land used by farmers and herders is coming under stress from climate change and human expansion, sparking deadly competition for increasingly limited space.

Noting that “Benue is strategic for Nigerian food security,” Iorpev called on the federal government to step in