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The death toll from the mysterious blast that struck a group of nomads in central Nigeria on Wednesday rose to 40 from the previous 27, the local government said Thursday.
“Right now, about 40 people have died,” said Nasarawa Governor Abdullahi Sule. The explosion occurred in Rukbi, on the border of Nasarawa and Benue states, an area plagued by communal violence.
A group representing nomads said Wednesday that the blast was due to an attack by the Nigerian army.
“There were rumors earlier that the Air Force carried out this shelling, but we now know that there were no Air Force flights over the area,” Soule told TV channel Arise News.
“It was a drone that flew over the area and dropped the bombs,” he said, but did not say who was in command.
A spokesman for the Nigerian Air Force did not respond to AFP’s request on the matter.
“It was an air strike. Twenty-seven people died,” Rawal Dano of Mietti Allah, a member of the Nigerian Cattle Breeding Association, said Wednesday.
“We all know that only the military has planes that carry out airstrikes and we call for a thorough investigation and necessary sanctions on those behind this,” he added.
In the past, there have been accidental military attacks on civilians in the north of the country, where the military is fighting jihadists and criminal gangs.
Disputes between cattlemen and farmers over land, grazing and water rights are common in central and northwestern Nigeria.
Benue state officials said nine people were killed last week by gunmen near a camp for displaced persons.
The roots of the tension go back more than a century and are caused by drought, population growth, the expansion of settled agriculture and poor governance.
In recent years, Fulani nomads are Muslim and farmers are predominantly Christian, and these conflicts can take on ethnic and religious dimensions.
Instability will be one of the key issues in Nigeria’s presidential elections scheduled for late February. Muhammadu, a former general who was elected in 2015 and re-elected in 2019, as required by the constitution, is not running again for his Buhari head of state.
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