British aid worker, Nigerian man shot dead at resort, four tourists abducted

KANO, Nigeria: Two people including a British aid worker have been shot dead and four tourists abducted in an attack by armed gunmen on a holiday resort in northwestern Nigeria, police said on Sunday.

Police and aid agency Mercy Corps named the dead woman as Faye Mooney.

“Faye was a dedicated and passionate communications and learning specialist”, Chief executive Neal Keny-Guyer said in a statement posted on social media, adding that colleagues were “utterly heartbroken”.

Mooney had “worked with Mercy Corps for almost two years, devoting her time to making a difference in Nigeria”, KenyGuyer added.

Gunmen stormed the Kajuru Castle resort, 60 kilometres southeast of Kaduna City at 11.40 pm (2240 GMT) on Friday, Kaduna state police spokesman Yakubu Sabo told reporters.

The Briton “was gunned down from the hill by the kidnappers who tried to gain entrance into the castle but failed”, Sabo said.

“They took away about five other locals but one person escaped,” he said.

A Nigerian man believed by local residents in Kajuru to be Mooney’s partner was also killed in the attack on the resort where a group of 13 tourists had arrived from Lagos, southwest Nigeria the police spokesman said.

In Kaduna and the wider northwest region, kidnapping for ransom has become an increasingly rampant, particularly on the road to the capital, Abuja, where armed attacks have thrived.

Kidnapping in Nigeria’s oil-rich south, has long been a security challenge, where wealthy locals and expatriate workers are often abducted.

Yet the problem has escalated in northern areas too, like Kaduna where criminal gangs made up of former cattle rustlers have been pushed into kidnapping after military crackdowns on cattle theft.

Kajuru is also flash point in the deadly conflict over increasingly limited land resources in Africa’s most populous country, between herders and farmers, predominantly across central and northern Nigeria.

The conflict has increasingly taken on ethnic and religious dimensions in the region, with the Fulani Muslim herders in conflict with Christian Adara farmers in Kajuru.