Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of recent reports of a large-scale killing targeting the Christian community in Benue State in Nigeria.

The motivations of the perpetrators behind these violent and shocking attacks are not fully known. There is no current evidence to suggest that the victims in the recent attacks in Benue state were targeted because of their religion. Whilst religious identity can play a role, farmer-herder conflicts are common in Nigeria with disputes often based on the loss of economic opportunity, historical grievances connected to competition over land and natural resources and disruption to traditional livelihoods created by environmental degradation.