NIGERIAN COMMUNAL CLASHES CLAIM MORE THAN 100 LIVES

Fri 19 May 2023:

Locals are searching the forest for more bodies as the death toll from conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria’s Plateau state has surpassed 100, Reuters reported quoting residents and local authorities.

On Tuesday, gunmen entered villages and set fire to a number of homes in the Mangu region, killing at least 20 people, including women and children.

The violence was in reprisal for farmers killing a herder and his cattle who had encroached on their land last month, local herder Bello Yahaya said on Friday.

Mangu local government chairman Minista Daniel Daput said a mass burial had been conducted for about 50 people. Residents said another 50 were to be buried on Friday and they were looking for more missing people in the surrounding bush.

Makut Simon Macham, a spokesperson for Plateau’s governor, said authorities were assessing the situation and would prosecute suspects, but he could not give casualty numbers.

The security crisis in the north-west and central regions of the country has stifled Nigeria’s development, despite its status as Africa’s largest economy and one of its top oil producers.

Plateau is one of several ethnically and religiously diverse hinterland states in Nigeria known as the Middle Belt, where intercommunal strife has killed hundreds in recent years.

The dispute is frequently portrayed as an ethno-religious conflict between nomadic Muslim herders, mainly ethnic Fulani, and predominantly Christian Indigenous farmers. Climate change and growing agribusiness, according to experts, have also intensified the dispute.