Hundreds of students are reported missing

Kidnapping epidemic is getting worse

DAKAR, SENEGAL >> Theirs were already lives of great hardship, in camps for displaced people, after they had fled their homes in Nigeria’s embattled northeast. One recent day, they risked a foray into the countryside to collect firewood — and around 200 of them, some officials said, were kidnapped.

Just days later, dozens of children — if not more — were reported abducted Thursday from a primary school some 500 miles away in central Nigeria.

Who was responsible was unclear, and the security services have made no statements. The first incident took place in the region terrorized by Boko Haram, the brutal Islamist group with a history of mass abductions. Residents told local media that bandits had carried out the second.

But the two had vital elements in common: They involved some of the most vulnerable people in society, and demonstrated the failure of Nigeria’s successive governments and armed forces to bring peace and stability to a fractious land.

Parts of Nigeria, a West African nation that is the most populous on the continent, are plagued by crime and violence, and the 15-year-old Boko Haram insurgency in the north continues. Boko Haram’s abduction of 276 schoolgirls from their dormitory in the town of Chibok 10 years ago, which set off international outrage, is still an open wound; 98 of the victims are still missing, according to Amnesty International.

More than 3,600 people were reported abducted in Nigeria last year — the highest number in five years, according to the Armed Conflict

Location and Event Data Project, though the true number is likely much higher as many episodes go unreported.

The details of the two most recent mass abductions remain extremely murky.

The first occurred in the state of Borno, which has been at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency. Across the northeast, more than 2 million people have left behind their homes and livelihoods to seek refuge in camps in garrison towns, where they struggle to scratch out a meager living. The towns are defended by the Nigerian military.

The people abducted in Borno — many of them women and children — ventured out from one such town, Ngala, near the border with Cameroon, in search of firewood to sell, according to Mohamed Malick Fall, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria. Some were released.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Nigeria army trucks are parked in an area where gunmen kidnapped school children from a school in Chikun, Nigeria, on Thursday.