Extremists kidnap 91 people in Nigeria: witnesses
MAIDUGURI, NIGERIA — Extremists have abducted 91 more people, including children as young as three, in weekend attacks on villages in Nigeria, witnesses said Tuesday, providing fresh evidence of the military’s failure to curb an Islamic uprising and the government’s inability to provide security.
The kidnappings come less than three months after more than 200 schoolgirls were taken in a mass abduction that embarrassed Nigeria’s government and military because of their slow response. Those girls are still being held captive.
The most recent victims included 60 girls and women, some of whom were married, and 31 boys, witnesses said. A local official confirmed the abductions, but security forces denied them.
There was no way to safely and independently confirm the report from Kummabza, 150 kilometres from Maiduguri, capital of Borno state and headquarters of a military state of emergency that has failed to curtail near-daily attacks by Boko Haram fighters.
An intelligence officer with Nigeria’s Department of State Security also said there had been a mass abduction, but he said it occurred in Kummabza and three nearby villages between June 13 and 15, and that no one knows the actual number abducted. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
There was no way to reconcile the confusion, which also surrounded the first abduction in mid-April.
Several prominent Nigerians questioned whether those abductions had taken place, including first lady Patience Jonathan, who claimed the reports were fabricated to discredit her husband’s administration.
Last week, a presidential committee investigating the April kidnappings in Chibok stressed that they did happen and clarified the number of students who have been kidnapped. It said there were 395 students at the school — 119 who escaped during the siege of the school and another 57 who escaped in the first couple of days of their abduction, leaving 219 unaccounted for.
John Campbell, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria who is an analyst with the Council of Foreign Relations, predicted that kidnappings would continue because, for Boko Haram, the strategy has been “remarkably successful; it focuses attention on the shortcomings of the Nigerian government.”
A strategy to rescue the schoolgirls is at an impasse. Nigeria’s military has said it knows where they are but fears their abductors would kill them if military action is taken.