Gunmen kill 24 in central Nigeria

The governor of Nigeria’s central Benue state said Wednesday that gunmen killed 24 people in two attacks, as unrest fuelled by heavily armed criminal gangs spreads across the region.

In Benue, clashes between nomadic herders and local farmers over land and water are usual, but in the last two years, communal tensions have escalated, with gangs known as bandits storming villages to kill, abduct, and rape residents.

“Suspected (Fulani) herdsmen invaded and killed 8 persons in Mbadwem in Guma local government and 16 in Tiortyu, a sprawling settlement in Tarka local government,” Benue’s government spokesman Nathaniel Ikyur said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Scores of others were injured and are receiving treatment in unnamed hospital in the state,” he said.

Ikyur said the attacks took place late Monday, while police said the assault in Tiortyu occurred at 1.30am on Tuesday.

On Sunday, gunmen killed more than 100 people in several attacks in nearby Plateau state, according to two local community leaders and the commander of a local vigilante force.

After those attacks, President Muhammadu Buhari vowed that there would be no mercy for those responsible, as pressure mounts on the authorities to curb worsening security.

In Benue, police confirmed the attack in Tiortyu but gave a lower death toll of nine people killed.

The force spokeswoman Catherine Anene said they could not yet confirm the second attack in Mbadwem.

Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom said residents should “rise up to defend themselves.”

“It is becoming increasingly glaring every day that my people are now an endangered species and so we can no longer wait for help from anywhere,” he said in a statement released by his spokesman on Tuesday.

“We have only one option,” he added. “To defend ourselves or get extinct. This is a case for our survival.”

Buhari’s security forces are also fighting a 12-year-old jihadist insurgency in the northeast and separatist tensions in the southeast, in addition to tackling gangs in northwest and central Nigeria.