Nigeria is facing an increase in kidnappings, after two mass kidnappings in less than a week, in the north of the country.
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With our correspondent in Lagos, Liza Fabbian
In the North-East, more than a hundred displaced women and girls are missing in the Borno region where Boko Haram and Iswap jihadists are active. In the North West, nearly 300 students from Kuriga school in the Kaduna region were kidnapped by armed men and taken into the forest.
Kidnappings have never stopped in the North-Western States of Nigeria. Almost everyone knows at least one person kidnapped in recent years – brother, distant cousin, neighbor or child.
During the night from Saturday to Sunday March 10, fifteen young students from a Koranic school and a woman were captured in an isolated village in Sokoto state. In this region bordering Niger, the countryside has been largely deserted for fear of attacks by bandits who steal livestock, pillage and kidnap everywhere.
A little further south, in the Kaduna region, the number of kidnappings had, however, decreased significantly in recent months, but on Thursday March 7, nearly 300 schoolchildren and high school students were taken into the forest by armed men, a kidnapping on an unprecedented scale in the Kaduna region. But in 2020/2021, Zamfara and Katsina states had already been affected by similar tragedies.
Military reinforcements were mobilized, on the orders of President Bola Tinubu, to try to find the hostages, some of whom were as young as eight years old.
Read alsoNigeria: new kidnapping of children in Sokoto State after two mass kidnappings