50 people killed in attacks on village in Nigeria

Gunmen have killed 50 people during two attacks on a village in north-central Nigeria, according to reports.

“47 people were killed in Umogidi village in Benue state and three other people had been slain in the same place,” the chairman of the Otukpo local government, Ruben Bako said.

The motive of the attacks was not immediately clear, though authorities said they believe both attacks were connected.

Suspicion fell on local herdsmen, who have clashed in the past with farmers over land disputes in north-central Nigeria.

The farmers accuse the herders, mostly of Fulani origin, of grazing their livestock on their farms and destroying their produce.

The herders insist that the lands are grazing routes that were first backed by law in 1965, five years after the country gained its independence.

Benue state, which is referred to as “Nigeria’s food basket” because of its bountiful harvests, is one of the hardest hit in the decades-long clashes between agrarian communities and nomadic cattle herders across Nigeria’s northwest and central regions.