‘There was blood on the altar, blood on the floor, bodies on the pews,” the BBC reported. Mass was just ending on Sunday in Saint Francis’s church in Owo, south-west Nigeria, when four gunmen armed with explosives and automatic weapons opened fire through the windows and then entered the building. Twenty minutes later they left at least 50 dead and scores more wounded.
Attacks of this kind are relatively rare in the state of Ondo, one of Nigeria’s most peaceful, but deaths from armed groups are endemic – 2,968 people are reported to have died nationally in such attacks in the first quarter of 2022, although 86 per cent of those were in northern Nigeria. Gangsterism and kidnappings for ransom are rife. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the Owo killings, and Nigeria’s authorities have had a poor record in pursuing those responsible. Rural security is particularly lax and vigilantism on the rise.
Although Islamist groups such as Boko Haram have been hoping to extend their campaign into Ondo state, most local sources are pointing the finger at ethnic Fulani gangs. They attribute the killings to ongoing tensions between nomadic cattle herders and settled farmers and suggest the attack was “a reprisal” for recent restrictions by the state authority on grazing in Ondo, including in forests where the supposed assailants have carried out multiple attacks. The restrictions were adopted after an increase in kidnappings in the state and reports of attacks and cattle encroachments on private farms.
There is nothing yet to link herders directly to the Owo church attack and they are easily scapegoated, as President Michael D Higgins warned in condemning the attack and “any attempt to scapegoat pastoral peoples who are among the foremost victims of the consequences of climate change”. “The solidarity of us all, as peoples of the world, is owed to all those impacted not only by this horrible event, but in the struggle by the most vulnerable, on whom the consequences of climate change have been inflicted,” he said.