Christian Jonathan’s mother was holding the 9-month-old boy in her arms when she was shot dead during an attack on their village in northwestern Nigeria. The assailants cut off one of Christian’s fingers and abandoned him by the side of the road with a bullet wound in his tiny leg.

“They left him on the ground beside his mother’s body,” said Joshua Jonathan, Christian’s father. “They thought the boy was dead.”

The late-night attack in April in Runji in Kaduna State left 33 people dead, most of them burned alive or shot dead.

Many more have been killed since in the continuing clashes between nomadic cattle herders and farming communities in northwest and central regions of the West African nation, including more than 100 this month in Plateau state.

The decades long violence is becoming more deadly, killing at least 2,600 people in 2021, according to the most recent data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Once armed with sticks, the groups now fight with guns that have been smuggled into the country.

Both sides accuse the government of injustice and marginalisation, but the clashes have also taken on a religious dimension, giving rise to militias that side with the herders, who are primarily Muslim, or the farmers from Christian communities.

The growing security crisis presents a huge challenge for Nigeria’s incoming president, Bola Tinubu, who rose to power in Nigeria — Africa’s largest economy and among its top oil producers — promising to improve the lives of affected communities and address the root causes of the crisis by providing jobs and ensuring justice.

 Tinubu’s inauguration is scheduled for Monday.