JOS, Nigeria: Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in the central city of Makurdi on Sunday, as anger mounted over the killing of dozens of people by gunmen in a nearby town.
Gunmen attacked the village of Yelewata on Friday night in a region that has seen a surge in violence amid clashes between Muslim Fulani herders and mostly Christian farmers competing for land and resources.
Police fired tear gas to break up a protest by thousands of people, witnesses said, as demonstrators called on the state’s governor to act swiftly to halt the cycle of violence.
“The protesters were given specific time by the security to make their peaceful protest and disperse,” Tersoo Kula, spokesperson for Benue state’s governor, told AFP.
John Shiaondo, a local journalist, said he was covering the “peaceful protest” when the police moved in and started firing tear gas.
“Many people ran away for fear of injuries, and I also left the scene for my safety,” he told AFP.
Joseph Hir, who took part in the protest, said people were protesting the killings in Benue when the police intervened.
“We are not abusing anyone, we are also not tampering with anybody’s property, we are discharging our rights to peacefully protest the unabated killings of our people, and now the police are shooting tear gas at us,” he told AFP.
Benue state governor Hyacinth Alia told a news conference late Sunday that the death toll had reached 59 in Yelewata, though residents said the toll could exceed 100.
“We will move very quickly to set up a five-man panel... to enable us find out who the culprits are, to know who the sponsors are and to identify the victims and to see how justice will be applied,” Alia said.
Amnesty International put the death toll at more than 100.
The rights group called the attack “horrifying,” saying it “shows the security measures (the) government claims to be implementing in the state are not working.”
Pope Leo XIV also condemned the killings, in comments during his Sunday prayer in Rome, calling it a “terrible massacre” in which mostly displaced civilians were murdered with “extreme cruelty.”
He said “rural Christian communities” in Benue were victims of incessant violence.
Authorities typically blame such attacks on Fulani herders but the latter say they are targets of violence and land seizures too.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said in a statement Sunday night he had “directed the security agencies to act decisively and arrest perpetrators of these evil acts on all sides of the conflict and prosecute them.
“Political and community leaders in Benue State must act responsibly and avoid inflammatory utterances that could further increase tensions and killings,” he said.
Governor Alia said earlier that “tactical teams had begun arriving from the federal government and security reinforcements are being deployed in vulnerable areas.”
“The state’s joint operational units are also being reinforced, and the government will not let up its efforts to defend the lives and property of all residents,” he said.
Attacks in the region, part of what is known as the central belt of Nigeria, are often motivated by religious or ethnic differences.
Two weeks ago, gunmen killed 25 people in two attacks in Benue state.
More than 150 people were killed in massacres across Plateau and Benue states in April.
