Gunmen in Nigeria kidnap around 100 over weekend

KADUNA, Nigeria — Gunmen in Nigeria kidnapped around 100 people, including women and children, in two-weekend attacks in Kaduna state, residents and police said on Monday.

Kidnappings by criminal gangs demanding ransoms have become an almost daily occurrence in Nigeria, especially in the north.

President Bola Tinubu, elected to lead the country of more than 210 million people last year, has ruled out the payment of ransoms in the operation to free the children.

Tinubu’s government did not immediately comment on the latest attacks.

Kaduna police spokesman Mansur Hassan confirmed the incident in Kajuru Station village on Sunday night but could not give an exact figure on those missing, but said security agents had been deployed to rescue the villagers.

Tanko Wada Sarkin, a village head, said 87 people were taken and told Reuters: “We have so far recorded the return of five people back home who fled through the bush. This attack makes it five times that these bandits are attacking this community.”

Residents said armed men dressed in army uniforms arrived in the village undetected because they had parked their motorbikes away from the village.

Aruwa Ya’u, another resident, said he was captured but released by the gunmen because he struggled to walk due to poor health. He was receiving treatment at a local government clinic, he said.

Gunmen are known to forcemarch their victims deep into the bush, holding them for as long as several months while awaiting ransom payments.

The abductions come after an armed gang seized 286 students and staff from a school in early March in Kuriga in Kaduna state, while in another incident gunmen seized 61 people on March 12 in Buda community.

In Dogon Noma, another community in Kajuru local government area, gunmen abducted 16 people from their homes in an attack on Saturday night, residents said.

Local resident Daniel Shamang said they had not heard anything from the abductors or the missing villagers.

Kidnappings at schools in Nigeria were first carried out by the extremist group Boko Haram, who seized more than 200 students from a girls’ school in Chibok in Borno state a decade ago.

But the tactic has since been adopted by criminal gangs without any ideological affiliation seeking ransom payments.

The kidnappings are tearing apart families and communities who have to pool their savings to pay the ransoms, often forcing them to sell prized possessions like land, cattle and grain to secure the release of captured loved ones.