ABUJA, NIGERIA (TIP): The violent abduction of five young Nigerian sisters near Abuja has sparked a national outcry and raised fears about insecurity in the country’s capital.
The sisters were seized at the start of the year by armed men who burst into their home just 15 miles (25 kilometres) from Abuja city centre, a family member told AFP.
She said the attackers killed one of the sisters, 21-year-old Nabeeha Al-Kadriyar, when a ransom deadline passed. Negotiations were ongoing for the release of the others.
Kidnapping for ransom has been a major problem in Nigeria with criminal gangs targeting highways, apartments and even snatching pupils from schools.
After public outrage over the sisters’ case this week, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu condemned what he called the “recent spate of kidnappings and bandit attacks”.
First Lady Remi Tinubu also voiced concern, while politicians and the media questioned the government’s strategy after gangs targeted parts of the heavily-guarded Federal Capital Territory, which is as big as some states but run by a minister rather than a governor.
One tabloid declared at the weekend that Abuja was “under siege”.
‘Lie low, buy time’
The Nigerian risk consultancy SBM Intelligence told AFP it had documented 283 people abducted in the Federal Capital Territory alone over the past year.
Some experts believe the country’s economic crisis is driving a rise in kidnappings as desperate Nigerians turn to crime for income. SBM analyst Confidence MacHarry said insecurity around the capital has been growing for years.
“It’s been getting worse for some time,” he said, citing a 2022 attack on a prison on the outskirts of Abuja as a landmark moment. Gunmen bombed their way into Kuje jail and freed hundreds of inmates in the raid claimed by Islamic State-allied jihadists.
The minister for the Federal Capital Territory has urged residents not to panic and promised to find a solution. MacHarry said the government needed a consistent approach and warned periodic crackdowns on criminals in Abuja’s satellite towns were not working.
“All the bandits have to do is lie low and buy themselves time,” he said. (AFP)
Tag: Nigeria
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Kidnapping of five sisters sparks outcry in Nigeria
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Death toll rises to almost 200 after attacks in central Nigeria
NIGERIA (TIP): The death toll from a series of attacks on villages in central Nigeria has climbed to almost 200, local authorities said December 27, as survivors began to bury the dead.
Armed groups launched attacks between Saturday evening and Tuesday morning in Nigeria’s Plateau State, a region plagued for several years by religious and ethnic tensions.
Authorities had previously put the death toll at 163.
During a meeting with Nigeria’s vice president on Wednesday, Monday Kassah, head of the local government in Bokkos, Plateau State, said that 148 Bokkos villagers had been killed in the attacks.
At least 50 people were also reported dead in several villages in the Barkin Ladi area, according to Dickson Chollom, a member of the state parliament.
“We appeal to you to resist the temptation to succumb to sectional divisions or the poisonous rhetoric of hatred towards your fellow citizens, as we pursue justice to ensure your security,” Vice President Kashim Shettima told local officials and displaced people on Wednesday.
There are fears the death toll could rise further as some people remain missing, Kassah told AFP on Tuesday, adding that 500 people had been injured and thousands displaced.
He said that at least 20 villages had been targeted in a series of well-coordinated attacks between Saturday evening and Monday morning.
Gunfire could still be heard on late Monday afternoon, according to a source from the region, which is on the dividing line between Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and mainly Christian south.
‘Apprehend the culprits’
A large number of the dead were buried on Tuesday, with the vice president of the Church of Christ in Nations, Timothy Nuwan, putting the number at 150.
“There are many people that were killed, slaughtered like animals, cold-blooded, some were in their houses, some were even outside,” he said.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday decried the attacks and ordered “security agencies to immediately move in, scour every stretch of the zone, and apprehend the culprits”.
Plateau State governor Caleb Mutfwang also called for “united efforts to identify and apprehend those responsible for these heinous acts”.
Northwest and central Nigeria have been long terrorised by bandit militias operating from bases deep in forests and raiding villages to loot and kidnap residents for ransom.
Competition for natural resources between nomadic herders and farmers, intensified by rapid population growth and climate pressures, has also exacerbated social tensions and sparked violence.
A jihadist conflict has raged in northeastern Nigeria since 2009, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing around two million, as Boko Haram battles for supremacy with rivals linked to the Islamic State group.
Tinubu has made tackling insecurity a priority since coming to office in May, as he seeks to encourage foreign investment in Africa’s most populous country.
The UN’s World Food Programme on Wednesday warned that conflict and insecurity, along with inflation and climate change, could sharply drive up hunger levels across Nigeria in the coming year. (AFP) -
More than 100 dead in Nigeria clashes, thousands displaced
NIGERIA (TIP): More than 100 people in central Nigeria have died in several days of inter-communal violence that have destroyed hundreds of homes and caused thousands to flee, local officials said on May 19.
The clashes between cattle herders and farming communities in Plateau State are the worst in years in a region that has long struggled with ethnic and religious tensions and reprisal attacks.
The death toll from attacks by gunmen on farming villages in and around the district of Mangu since the start of the week has passed 100 after earlier reports said 85 people were killed, a local official said.
Plateau state security forces had said on Thursday that calm had been restored, but local sources said several villages were still struggling with violence and residents were fleeing.
“The number of people killed has exceeded 100 people from those attacks,” Mangu district chairman Daput Minister Daniel told AFP.
“Up till now, there were reports of attacks and burning of houses in many places within the local government area.” A lawmaker representing Mangu and neighbouring Bokkos in the House of Representatives also said around 100 people had been killed and more than a dozen communities ravaged by attacks.
Lawmaker Solomon Maren told AFP on Friday that the situation was now calm, but access to some communities was still complicated. Plateau State government has so far not given any death toll, only saying the violence “left many dead.”
The state government convened an emergency meeting over the attacks and pledged security forces on the ground would stem further violence, a statement said on Friday.
“We are working to redeploy more men,” said state police spokesman Alfred Alabo.
“We are also trying to know about the death toll, and properties destroyed.”
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said more than 3,000 people had been displaced and hundreds of houses destroyed. Police said five people had been arrested. Violence across Nigeria has been on the rise in the last few weeks after a brief calm period during the February presidential and March state elections.
Last month, gunmen suspected to be herders killed 33 people in an attack on a farming village in northwestern Kaduna state, where inter-communal herder-farmer violence is also common.
Nigeria’s security forces in the northwest are also battling heavily armed bandit militias, as well as a 14-year-old jihadist insurgency in the northeast and separatist tensions in the southeast. (AFP) -
Gunmen abduct 317 schoolgirls in Nigeria
KANO, Nigeria (TIP): Unidentified gunmen seized 317 schoolgirls in northwest Nigeria on Friday, the police said, the second such kidnapping in little over a week in a region increasingly targeted by militants. School kidnappings, first practised by jihadist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province, have become endemic around the increasingly lawless north, to the anguish of families and frustration of Nigeria’s government and armed forces. The police in Zamfara state, where the latest attack took place, said they had begun search-and-rescue operations with the army to find the “armed bandits” who took the girls at Government Girls Science Secondary School in the town of Jangebe. Zamfara’s information commissioner, Sulaiman Tanau Anka, said the assailants came firing sporadically. “They also moved some on foot,” he said. — Reuters
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Clashes between herdsmen farmers kill 33 in Nigeria
KANO, NIGERIA (TIP): At least 33 people were killed in clashes between cattle herders and farmers in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state, a police chief told AFP Thursday. KANO, Nigeria: At least 33 people were killed in clashes between cattle herders and farmers in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state, a police chief told AFP on july 20.