Attack by gunmen leaves at least 40 people dead in Nigeria, the country's president says

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria's president said that at least 40 people were killed when Muslim gunmen, believed to be herders, attacked a Christian farming community in the north-central part of the country, the latest in an increasing wave of violence in the West African country.

President Bola Tinubu also said he has ordered an investigation over the late Sunday night attack on the Zike community, extending his condolences to the victims and their families.

“I have instructed security agencies to thoroughly investigate this crisis and identify those responsible for orchestrating these violent acts,” Tinubu said in a statement late on Monday.

Amnesty International said the victims, who included children and the elderly, were taken by surprise and could not flee from the gunmen.

Such attacks have become common in this part of Africa’s most populous country, where gunmen — typically herders from Fulani, a Muslim tribe — exploit security lapses to launch deadly raids on farmers in a fight over land resources.

According to Andy Yakubu, a local resident, gunmen in Sunday night's attack also destroyed and looted homes in the Zike community, located in the Bassa area of Plateau state,

Yakubu said he saw bodies after the attack and that the number of dead could exceed 50. No one has been arrested so far, he added.

The Fulani have been accused of carrying out mass killings across the northwest and central regions, where the decades-long conflict over access to land and water has further worsened the divisions between farmers and herders, Christians and Muslims.

Amnesty says that between December 2023 and February 2024, 1,336 people were killed in Plateau state — an indication that the measures taken by Tinubu’s administration to curb the violence are not working.

Samuel Jugo, spokesperson of the Irigwe Development Association, an ethnic organization in the Bassa area, said in a statement on Monday that at least 75 people of the Irigwe, a Christian ethnic group, have been killed since December 2024.

Jugo said that despite deployment of additional security forces to the area, violence still occurs and described the latest assault as "very provocative, vexing and undeserving.”

In May 2024, armed men attacked remote villages in Plateau, killing at least 40 people during a late-night raid.

The violence over land resources in north-central Nigeria is separate from the battles with Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis who took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law. That conflict, now Africa’s longest struggle with militancy, has also spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors.