At least 50 people have been killed by gunmen during two attacks on a village in northcentral Nigeria, authorities said Friday.
Ruben Bako, chairman of the Otukpo local government where the massacre happened, said that gunmen killed 47 people on Wednesday in Umogidi village in Benue state. A day earlier, three other people had been slain in the same place, he said.
Anene Sewuese with Benue state police confirmed that attack and said that the assailants had opened fire at a market. However, Sewuese put the death toll at eight people, including a police officer.
"The 46 casualties were from the bodies of victims found and retrieved. Many people are still missing, so number of those killed may be higher," Paul Hemba, a security advisor to Benue State governor, told AFP.
The motive of the attacks was not immediately clear, though authorities said they believe both attacks were connected. While there was no claim of responsibility, authorities said suspicion fell on local herdsmen, who have clashed in the past with farmers over land disputes in northcentral Nigeria.
The farmers accuse the herders, mostly of Fulani origin, of grazing their livestock on their farms and destroying their produce. The herders insist that the lands are grazing routes that were first backed by law in 1965, five years after the country gained its independence.
Benue state, which is referred to as ”Nigeria’s food basket" because of its bountiful harvests, is one of the hardest hit in the decadeslong clashes between agrarian communities and nomadic cattle herders across Nigeria’s northwest and central regions.
Agricultural yields from the state have decreased over the years because of these frequent clashes, further squeezing families in a region where many are poor and hungry.
Communal violence is just one of the security challenges facing President-elect Bola Tinubu who won a presidential ballot last month that was marked by heavy delays and accusations of vote rigging.
