Gunmen kill 21 in Niger

Tragedy struck at the weekend in Niger State as some gunmen, suspected to be Fulani herdsmen, attacked Etogi community, Gbara ward, in Mokwa Local Government Area of  the state, killing 21 people.

Metro gathered that the incident occurred on Saturday.

An informed source attributed the attack to an earlier disagreement between some Fulani youths and members of the community, which reportedly led to the death of one of the herdsmen.

The source, who craved anonymity in a chat with Metro on Sunday, said that the Fulani cattle rearers who maintained a settlement near the community were offered land to farm on the agreement that certain percentage of the proceeds would go to the village head.

Further checks revealed that disagreement ensued when the cattle owners allegedly reneged on their earlier promise to remit the agreed percentage this year, claiming that the land in question already belonged to them.

Irked by the death of one of them, the cattle owners allegedly contacted their kinsmen elsewhere, solicited for reinforcement and launched an attack on the community’s mosque when Muslim adherents were observing their early morning prayers.

An insider, one Malam Mairo Mohammed, informed Metro in a telephone interview on Sunday that the attackers killed everybody in the mosque, including the Imam.

Women and children who were woken by the pandemonium which broke out in the community as a result of the attack were said to have fled in different directions, with some of them sustaining injuries in the process.

The spokesman of the state Police Command, DSP Bala Elkana, confirmed the incident to Metro in an interview on Sunday, saying that no fewer than  20 people were killed during the early morning prayers.

He said the attack was a reprisal to an earlier killing of a herdsman by the villagers, adding that though the killing was managed, it appeared cattle owners were not satisfied and decided to retaliate.

According to him, eight people sustained injuries during the attack and were recuperating in a nearby hospital.

He, however, disclosed that a detachment of mobile policemen had been deployed to the community, while personnel from the Department of State Services and the command’s Criminal Investigation Department were also on ground to keep peace.