KADUNA: Gunmen abducted dozens of people from a village in northwest Nigeria on Tuesday, just days after abducting more than 250 pupils from a school in the same region, two local officials and a UN source said.
Criminal gangs often carry out mass kidnappings in northwestern Nigeria, targeting schools, villages and highways where they can quickly hold large numbers of people for ransom.
Tuesday’s abductions in Kajuru district of Kaduna state occurred as security forces searched for pupils who were abducted from their school in Kuriga village, about 150 kilometers away.
The spate of large-scale kidnappings is a challenge to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government, which has vowed to tackle insecurity while tackling a cost-of-living crisis and bringing more investment to Africa’s most populous nation.
But local councilor Abubakar Buda told Channels TV that gunmen attacked the village early Tuesday morning, going from house to house to abduct residents and opening fire sporadically.
Buda said only military intervention prevented more people from being kidnapped, Channels reports. State lawmaker Usman Danlami Stingo told Arise News that 32 women and 29 men were detained.
Officials say soldiers are searching the northwest forests to rescue the Kuriga students, but the families say few details have emerged since the abductions.
The mass kidnapping in Kaduna state and another in the northeast a week earlier came nearly 10 years after Boko Haram militants sparked huge international outrage in 2014 by abducting more than 250 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno state.
