LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigerian police said Sunday that 86 people were killed in a series of clashes between Muslim herders and Christian farmers in the central state of Plateau.

President Muhammadu Buhari appealed for calm as the military and police tried to end the bloodshed, and he said ‘‘no efforts will be spared’’ to find the attackers and prevent reprisal attacks.

The independent Channels Television quoted Mathias Tyopev, a Plateau police spokesman, as saying 86 people had been killed, with at least 50 houses destroyed, in violence that appeared to have started overnight Saturday.

Deadly clashes between herders and farmers in central Nigeria are a growing security concern in Africa’s most populous country. The fighting by some accounts has been deadlier than Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremist insurgency, which continues to carry out attacks in the northeast.

That extremist threat has been cited as one cause of the growing tensions as herders, who are also feeling the effects of climate change, are forced south into more populated farming communities in search of safe grazing.

Associated Press