The gunmen attacked after dusk and persecuted the farmer Fidelis Adidi away from the Nigerian people of Yelwata. The next morning he returned to find the carbonized remains of one of his two wives and four of his children.
They had been living in a room he had rented in the market, in an attempt to keep them safe from a wave of clashes between cattle shepherds and farmers in the middle belt region of the country.
His second wife and another son were seriously injured in the assault that began on Friday night and, according to Amnesty International, killed about 100 people in the city in the Benue region.
“My body is weak and my heart is still running,” said the 37 -year -old man Reuters While standing out of the room, inspecting the damage. “I lost five of my family members.”
In another room on the market, the bodies lay burned beyond recognition next to blackened piles of food and agricultural equipment.
The authorities have fought to contain the violence that has cooked over low heat, fed by the competition on the earth, as well as ethnic and religious divisions.
President Bola Tinubu, who described the recent increase in “depressing” attacks on Monday, should visit Benue on Wednesday, his first visit there since he arrived in office two years ago.
Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said he was working with help agencies to help at least 3,000 people displaced by violence in a territory where the northern Muslim majority meets the predominantly Christian south.
The merchant of the Talatu Agauta market, who is pregnant with his second child, fled when the attackers arrived on Friday night and took refuge in the state capital Markudi.
He returned during the weekend to find 40 bags of his rice had been burned. A devastating blow, but not enough to get her out of her house.
“I returned and even if I die here, I don’t care,” he said.
