President Bola Tinubu ordered a probe into “this crisis” as the numbers killed in under two weeks in the central state topped 100.
The attack struck some 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the Plateau state capital Jos.
A Red Cross official said 52 bodies had been retrieved and added: “We are still searching.” The official added that there were 30 injured and 30 houses burnt down.
Dorcas John, a resident of Zike, told AFP: “The attackers, unknown to us, came into the community and were shooting anywhere, and they killed eight people.”
Some “used machetes,“ Peter John, 24, told AFP, pointing at his nephew lying on a hospital bed in the state capital Jos. “This boy received the same wounds as his father, who was killed,“ he said adding that the boy’s two siblings including a toddler were also stabbed.
“I have instructed security agencies to thoroughly investigate this crisis and identify those responsible for orchestrating these violent acts,“ Tinubu, who is on a visit to France, said in a statement issued by his office.
Plateau state governor Manasseh Mutfwang vowed in an address that “we will no longer allow our communities to be turned into killing fields. These are not isolated incidents.”
Though millions of Nigerians of different backgrounds live side by side, intercommunal violence often flares in Plateau state.
As Africa’s most populous country has grown, so has the amount of land that farmers use, while grazing routes have come under stress from climate change.
When violence flares, weak policing all but guarantees reprisal attacks, experts say.
After the killings in Bokkos this month, a local official told reporters that the violence was the result of “ethnic and religious cleansing” by attackers “speaking the Fulani dialect”.
Muslim community group JNI warned after last week’s attack: “We fear that the way things are going, if not well-managed, it could lead to anarchy.”
The state commissioner of information and communication, Joyce Ramnap, said that the “attacks pose an existential threat to the lives and livelihoods of the peace-loving people of the state”.
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