Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu speaks on the opening ceremony of the Discussion board on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) on the Nice Corridor of the Individuals in Beijing in September, 2024.
Greg Baker/AFP by way of AP
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Greg Baker/AFP by way of AP
ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s president mentioned on Monday that at the least 40 individuals had been killed when Muslim gunmen, believed to be herders, attacked a Christian farming group within the north-central a part of the nation, the most recent in an rising wave of violence within the West African nation.
President Bola Tinubu additionally mentioned he has ordered an investigation over the late Sunday night time assault on the Zike group, extending his condolences to the victims and their households.
“I have instructed security agencies to thoroughly investigate this crisis and identify those responsible for orchestrating these violent acts,” Tinubu mentioned in a press release late Monday.
Amnesty Worldwide mentioned the victims, who included kids and the aged, had been taken abruptly and couldn’t flee from the gunmen.
Such assaults have turn into widespread on this a part of Africa’s most populous nation, the place gunmen — usually herders from Fulani, a Muslim tribe — exploit safety lapses to launch lethal raids on farmers in a struggle over land sources.
In accordance with Andy Yakubu, a neighborhood resident, gunmen in Sunday night time’s assault additionally destroyed and looted properties within the Zike group, situated within the Bassa space of Plateau state,
Yakubu mentioned he noticed our bodies after the assault and that the variety of useless might exceed 50. Nobody has been arrested to this point, he added.
The Fulani have been accused of finishing up mass killings throughout the northwest and central areas, the place the decades-long battle over entry to land and water has additional worsened the divisions between farmers and herders, Christians and Muslims.
Amnesty says that between December 2023 and February 2024, 1,336 individuals had been killed in Plateau state — a sign that the measures taken by Tinubu’s administration to curb the violence should not working.
Samuel Jugo, spokesperson of the Irigwe Improvement Affiliation, an ethnic group within the Bassa space, mentioned in a press release on Monday that at the least 75 individuals of the Irigwe, a Christian ethnic group, have been killed since December 2024.
Jugo mentioned that regardless of deployment of further safety forces to the world, violence nonetheless happens and described the most recent assault as “very provocative, vexing and undeserving.”
In Might 2024, armed males attacked distant villages in Plateau, killing at the least 40 individuals throughout a late-night raid.
The violence over land sources in north-central Nigeria is separate from the battles with Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis who took up arms in 2009 to struggle Western schooling and impose their radical model of Islamic legislation. That battle, now Africa’s longest battle with militancy, has additionally spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors.
