Kebbi’s deputy governor, Umar Tafida, and senior security officials attended funeral prayers for the 15 victims in Mera on Saturday, his office said in a statement.
Nigeria has been plagued by armed violence since the 2009 emergence of the Boko Haram group in the Lake Chad basin, in the northeast of the country.
Various Islamist groups have split from or emerged alongside the insurgency, notorious for several mass kidnappings of school girls, despite a military crackdown.
Armed bandits and kidnap gangs have also spread chaos across the region, alongside sometimes bloody conflicts between farming communities and nomadic herdsmen.
The unrest has spread to northwest Nigeria and contributed to a looming famine, which UN agencies say could see 33 million people facing “acute food insecurity” by next year.
On Tuesday, Idris Muhammad Gobir, the deputy governor of Kebbi’s neighbour Sokoto State, briefed the federal military on the emergence of the Lakurawa group.
