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The attack occurred late Sunday night in the Naridon village in
Kaduna state’s Kaura council area, said Derek Christopher,
chairman of the civil society group Southern Kaduna Peace and
Security Network.
“The same community was attacked last year around this time,"
Christopher said in a statement, suggesting that the government
has abandoned any intention of protecting the area from attacks
by armed groups. "I don’t know who these people have left to
fight for them,” he said.
Raphael Joshua, a resident who was helping the injured, told The
Associated Press that bodies of the victims had been deposited
at a nearby hospital and that arrangements were being made for
their burials.
The commissioner for home affairs and internal security in
Kaduna State, Sule Shu’aibu, said that he had not been briefed
on the attack. Authorities are often slow to acknowledge attacks
in the West African nation as violence has escalated in recent
years.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Armed groups, known as ‘bandits’, regularly carry out raids and
kidnappings for ransom in the northwest and north-central parts
of Nigeria. Authorities have said the bandit groups include
mostly former herders who took up arms against farming
communities after clashes between them over increasingly
strained resources.
Alongside attacks by bandits, Nigeria is also plagued by an
insurgency fought by the Boko Haram extremist group and its
splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province. Both
groups are mostly active in northeastern Nigeria.
In the past year, Nigeria has been in the crosshairs of the U.S.
government, which has accused the Nigerian government of not
protecting Christians in the country, leading to a diplomatic
rift. The U.S. launched an attack against alleged Islamic State
group members on Nigerian territory on Dec. 25 with the
cooperation of the Nigerian government.
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