Gunmen killed 30 peopleyesterday, Saturday, carrying out attacks in six villages in northwestern Nigeria, which is plagued by gang violence, local police said today.

“Guilds” on “twenty motorbikes” raided Tangaza District (Sokoto State) killing “eight people in Raka, seven in Bilingawa, six in Jamba, four in Nabagi, three in Raka Duce and two in Chalewa”, Sokoto police spokesman Ahmad Rufai said in a statement.

The motive for this attack is not clear, however, in these rural areas Nigeriaand fierce competition between herders and farmers for natural resources fuels the violence.

In this zone, where land for cultivation or grazing is increasingly limited, conflicts have multiplied and these communities mobilize armed groups to ensure their protection.

Some of these armed groups, known locally as “gangs”, have gradually turned into criminal gangs and attack, loot villages, kill their inhabitants or kidnap them for ransom.

According to the police, the gang members carried out targeted raid against these villages after a self-defense group from a neighboring village beat up herdsmen.

However, according to two residents of the area, who assure that 36 people were killed in these attacks, it is not going to for tensions between communities, but for an extortion attempt by an armed group.

“We buried 36 people yesterday (Sunday), who were killed by the gangs,” Kasimou Moussa, a resident of Raqqa Dutse, told AFP, confirming the account given by a resident of the neighboring village of Gadaba, Mansour Abdullahi.

The attackers “were enraged by our refusal to negotiate with them and pay them money for our protection, as other villages did (…) so they attacked our villages,” Musa explained.

THE Nigeria’s new president, Bola Tinubu, who took office on Monday at the head of Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s largest economy, faces many security challenges. In his inauguration speech he promised to make the fight against insecurity his “absolute priority”.