JOS: Attackers killed 52 people in Nigeria’s Plateau state, a Red Cross source said Monday, in the latest eruption of violence in a region known for intercommunal conflict and deadly land disputes.
President Bola Tinubu ordered a probe into “this crisis” as the numbers killed in under two weeks in the central state topped 100.
The Sunday night attack on the villages of Zike and Kimakpa, in the Bassa area, came after armed men this month struck villages in the Bokkos area of the same state, killing 52 people.
The attack struck some 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the Plateau state capital Jos.
Land disputes, often between Muslim Fulani herders and mostly Christian farmers, often descend into deadly violence, especially in rural areas where law enforcement is largely absent.
A Red Cross official said 52 bodies had been retrieved and added: “We are still searching.” The official added that there were 30 injured and 30 houses burnt down.
Rights group Amnesty International put the death toll at 54. It added in a post on X that hundreds of people had been displaced.
Dorcas John, a resident of Zike, told AFP: “The attackers, unknown to us, came into the community and were shooting anywhere, and they killed eight people.”
Other witnesses told AFP that about 100 men raided their village.
Some “used machetes,“ Peter John, 24, told AFP, pointing at his nephew lying on a hospital bed in the state capital Jos. “This boy received the same wounds as his father, who was killed,“ he said adding that the boy’s two siblings including a toddler were also stabbed.
The motive for the killings and the identity of the attackers were not immediately known.
“I have instructed security agencies to thoroughly investigate this crisis and identify those responsible for orchestrating these violent acts,“ Tinubu, who is on a visit to France, said in a statement issued by his office.
“We cannot allow this devastation and the tit-for-tat attacks to continue. Enough is enough,“ he said.
Plateau state governor Manasseh Mutfwang vowed in an address that “we will no longer allow our communities to be turned into killing fields. These are not isolated incidents.”
Intercommunal violence
Though millions of Nigerians of different backgrounds live side by side, intercommunal violence often flares in Plateau state.
Researchers say the causes of conflict in Plateau are often complicated.
As Africa’s most populous country has grown, so has the amount of land that farmers use, while grazing routes have come under stress from climate change.
Land grabbing and political and economic tensions between locals and those considered outsiders, as well as the influx of hardline Muslim and Christian preachers, have heightened divisions in recent decades.
When violence flares, weak policing all but guarantees reprisal attacks, experts say.
Last week, army troops recovered the headless body of a 16-year Fulani herder in the Bassa area. His cattle were also stolen.
After the killings in Bokkos this month, a local official told reporters that the violence was the result of “ethnic and religious cleansing” by attackers “speaking the Fulani dialect”.
A local herder association slammed the remarks, saying that the Fulfulde language, as it is formally known, is widely spoken in the country, “even (by) criminals”.
Muslim community group JNI warned after last week’s attack: “We fear that the way things are going, if not well-managed, it could lead to anarchy.”
The Plateau state government condemned the most “unprovoked” killings.
The state commissioner of information and communication, Joyce Ramnap, said that the “attacks pose an existential threat to the lives and livelihoods of the peace-loving people of the state”.
