At least 15 students were kidnapped from a school in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto state, by gunmen who forced their way into the school early Saturday. According to the school owner, some of those abducted are aged below 13. This is the third mass kidnapping in northern Nigeria since late last week.
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According to a report by SBM, an Africa-focused geopolitical research firm, farmers in northwestern states like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara and Jigawa, where banditry is widespread, often pay bandits twice just to be allowed to use their land during the planting and harvesting seasons. The situation has adversely affected Nigeria's food security.
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Dozens killed in ‘barbaric, senseless’ violence in Nigeria
Gunmen attacked a school in Nigeria’s northwest region Thursday morning and abducted at least 287 students, the headteacher told authorities, marking the second mass abduction in the West African nation in less than a week.
Locals told The Associated Press the assailants surrounded the government-owned school in Kaduna State’s Kuriga town just as the pupils were about to start the school day.
Authorities had said earlier that more than 100 students were taken hostage in the attack. Sani Abdullahi, the headteacher, however, told Kaduna Gov. Uba Sani when he visited the town that the total number of those missing after a headcount was 287.
“We will ensure that every child will come back. We are working with the security agencies,” the governor told the villagers.
Abductions of students from schools in northern Nigeria are common and have become a source of concern since 2014 when Islamic extremists kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls in Borno state’s Chibok village. In recent years, the abductions have been concentrated in northwestern and central regions, where dozens of armed groups often target villagers and travelers for huge ransoms.
The assailants stormed a government primary school in Chikun’s Kuriga town shortly after morning assembly at 8 a.m., taking almost 200 pupils hostage before any help could come, said Joshua Madami, a local youth leader.
Security forces and a government delegation arrived in the town several hours later as a search operation widened, while community members and parents gathered to wait for news.
“The government is trying everything possible with the security agencies to see how we can rescue them,” said Musa, the council chairman.
The attack occurred days after more than 200 people, mostly women and children, were abducted by extremists in northeastern Nigeria.
Women, children and students are often targeted in the mass abductions in the conflict-hit northern region and many victims are released only after paying huge ransoms.
Observers say both attacks are a reminder of Nigeria’s worsening security crisis which resulted in the deaths of several hundred people in 2023, according to an AP analysis.
Bola Tinubu was elected president of Nigeria last year after promising to end the violence. But there has been “no tangible improvement in security situation yet” under Tinubu, said Oluwole Ojewale, West and Central Africa researcher with the Africa-focused Institute for Security Studies.
Chinedu Asadu, AP
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A report by an Africa-focused geopolitical firm highlights cases in banditry-ravaged states like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara, and Jigawa. Farmers say the bandits' actions have forced many to abandon their farms, which leads to decreased food production.
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Former Boko Haram militants in Nigeria have warned they might return to fighting if they don't get more support from the authorities.
The ex-fighters, who now live in camps in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, say they are frustrated that for months their essential needs had been ignored.
Some told DW that they were better off fighting for the militant group than living in the camps.
"Honestly, if the government does not fulfill what they promised us, there is going to be a serious problem," one of the former insurgents told DW. "Look at how I lost weight and lost my shape. Sincerely speaking, I prefer going [back] to the bush."
The Borno state and Nigeria's federal government promised Boko Haram fighters who surrendered that they would receive training and skills as an alternative to violence and militancy. The Nigerian authorities also pledged to provide start-off capital for the ex-fighters and reintegrate them into society if they laid down their arms.
But over the past two years, only few have benefited from what the government promised. There are over 100,000 former Boko Haram members living in various camps in Borno state awaiting reintegration.
Protests outside camps
Last month, some former members — joined by their families — staged a protest outside Dikwa camp located in Borno state over their concerns.
There were similar agitations in the Mafa camp, which also houses ex-Boko Haram fighters and other internally displaced persons. Former militants in these camps have all threatened to return to the bush if their needs are not met.
Some confided in DW that several former combatants had already returned to their forest enclaves.
"Most of them are saying they are better off when they are with the insurgents because they are doing well in terms of food and essentials," another former Boko Haram fighter told DW. " Most of them are willing to go back to where they came from."
Authorities dismiss threats
However, Babagana Umara Zulum, Borno state governor, insisted that the government is doing its best to support the ex-fighters. Zulum accused the former fighters of showing a lack of gratitude.
"No any administration be it federal or state has the capacity to provide food and non-food items to the millions of its people on a daily basis," Zulum told DW, adding that anybody willing to stay in the camp was welcome to do so.
"Anybody who is not willing to stay in the camp — he wants to go to the bush — allow him to go back to the bush."
The governor revealed that efforts are ongoing to address the issue of food shortages at the camps housing these former fighters and others.
He warned that anyone instigating the ongoing agitations to desist. "Anybody who is trying to sabotage this administration will be dealt with accordingly."
Ex-fighters a major security threat
Security experts and analysts have warned the government against ignoring the agitations and threats from the former fighters.
Major (retired) Muhammad Bashir Shu'aibu Galma told DW the threat of returning to the bush is dangerous for Nigeria and the entire Sahel region.
"To allow these people to go back to the fighting spirit is the worst thing," Shu'aibu said. "These people must have known enough now some of the military secrets, positions, even for the limited time they had and mingled with the society, it will be a setback," he added.
Professor Lawal Jafar Tahir, a political analyst from Yobe State University Damaturu, agrees and expressed fears of Nigeria's security situation worsening should the ex-fighters opt to pick up guns again.
"They are more or less a time bomb now to society," Tahir said, adding that if the former militants return to the bush and continue the insurgency, it could be more dangerous.
According to him, the fighters "have now gathered reasonable information and opportunity to attack people, particularly the civilians."
Tahir urged the government to address their demands promptly. "When they revolt, it is going to be very hard for the government to control them," he added.
Last year, the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) cited the Boko Haram insurgency as President Bola Tinubu's most challenging security threat.
The insurgency — in its fifteenth year — has shown no signs of ending despite efforts by Nigeria's military to curb it.
Boko Haram is most active in northeastern Nigeria, with footholds in Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
By Muhammad Al-Amin, DW
Related story: Suspected insurgents kidnap 50 people in northeast Nigeria
Suspected Islamist insurgents kidnapped 50 people, mostly women, in northeastern Nigeria this week, local officials and a resident said on Wednesday, the latest mass abduction by fighters who have waged an insurgency for more than a decade.
Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters have mainly operated in Borno state in the northeast, targeting security forces and civilians, in the process killing and displacing tens of thousands of people.
The latest incident took place on Monday in the remote Gamboru area, which shares a border with Chad and Cameroon, said an official of the Civilian Joint Task Force, which helps the army to fight the jihadists.
The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said the group of at least 50 people from a camp for internally displaced persons, went to collect firewood on the shores of Lake Chad, where ISWAP is known to operate.
They were ambushed by gunmen and made to walk across bushy paths into neighbouring Chad, the official said, adding that three of the kidnapped women managed to escape.
The Nigerian Army did not respond to a request for comment.
Falmata Bukar, one of the three women who escaped, told Reuters by phone that the gunmen had "surrounded us and we were asked to follow them to the bush."
She later escaped with two others on Tuesday, she said.
Barkindo Saidu, head of Borno's emergency agency, said he was travelling to the area to assess the situation but was not yet ready to declare the people missing.
The agency is in charge of camps housing thousands of Nigerians displaced by the insurgency.
By Ahmed Kingimi, Reuters
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Six residents, including the ward head, Haruna Wakili, were killed when terrorists attacked Yar Nasarawa, a community in Faskari Local Government Area of Katsina State on Monday.
Residents said the terrorists abducted about 38 residents, including women and children and left 10 residents with gunshot injuries. They also burnt down six houses, eight commercial vehicles and shops in the community.
Yar Nasarawa is less than five kilometres away from the Army Super Camp situated in Faskari. The camp was established by the former Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, in 2018.
“The attackers came prepared. I have never seen them in such number,” a resident, Auwal Liman, who said he ran into the bush during the attack, said. “While some of them were shooting indiscriminately, others were putting vehicles and shops on fire.”
The terrorists stormed the community around 11 p.m. and blocked all entries and exits to ward off support from the military and members of the Community Watch Corps in the area.
The six dead residents were buried Tuesday morning in the community, according to Mr Liman.
“We are in a sorry situation. We can’t go to the farm. When we stay away from our farms and local markets, the terrorists follow us into our communities and kill us. Our lives hardly matter,” Mr Liman lamented.
Motorcycle-riding terrorists have been unleashing mayhem on residents in the north-west for over a decade. leading to layers of humanitarian crises in the sub-region.
“The terrorists were merciless in yesterday’s attack,” a resident, Abdullahi Adamu, said. “They burnt down a child. They took him inside his mother’s room set the room ablaze and slaughtered another old man in the same house. It was barbaric.”
Mr Adamu, who said he climbed a rock outside the community and waited till early morning, said he has lost hope in the government and security agencies.
The police spokesperson in the state, Abubakar-Sadik Aliyu, confirmed the attack to journalists in Katsina but did not provide the details.
“The Commissioner of Police, CP Aliyu Musa, had since deployed the command’s tactical, operational and intelligence to the scene, and currently combing the surrounding bushes for the possible arrest of the perpetrators for diligent prosecution,” Mr Aliyu said.
By Mohammed Babangida, Premium Times
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A group of armed men attacked a police division in Zurmi town, in Nigeria's northwest Zamfara state, but were repelled by officers with casualties recorded on both sides, the police said on Monday.
Gangs of heavily armed men referred to as bandits by locals have wreaked havoc across Nigeria's northwest in the past three years, kidnapping thousands, killings hundreds, and making it unsafe to travel by road or to farm in some areas.
Zamfara police spokesperson Yazid Abubakar said suspected bandits wielding sophisticated weapons attacked the division late on Sunday, killing a senior officer and wounding two others.
"The policemen on duty retaliated and repelled the attack after a serious gun duel in which many of the bandits were killed and some took to their heels with possible gunshot wounds," Abubakar said in a statement.
Abubakar said the police have begun an investigation and have deployed more men to fortify the town and arrest fleeing culprits.
Residents said at least seven people were killed during the shootout, including the divisional crime officer.
Ibrahim Mohammed, a resident of Zurmi who witnessed the attack, told Reuters by phone that an unspecified number of people were kidnapped and the police division was set ablaze.
"They ransacked the place and set ablaze some shops and cars near the police station," Mohammed said.
Another resident Usman Abubakar said, "as I speak with you, they also abducted some people whose numbers cannot be immediately ascertained."
Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, is grappling with a multifaceted security crisis, including kidnappings for ransom, which has reached alarming proportions.
The widespread insecurity is exacerbating a cost-of-living crisis caused in part by the reforms of President Bola Tinubu who has yet to detail how he plans to the tackle the situation.
By Ahmed Kingimi, Reuters
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“We’d all be sitting in class and all of us would just be crying,” she says.
Like Usman, whose father was killed and family held captive by the militant jihadist group Boko Haram, all 100 women and girls at the school have either witnessed a parent’s murder or been kidnapped themselves.
Another pupil, 17-year-old Hassana, recalls being forced to join the militants, handling weapons and carry out acts of violence. “We drank blood,” she says.
Boko Haram has targeted schools as part of its campaign of atrocities in north-eastern Nigeria since 2010. It has carried out massacres and multiple abductions, including 2014’s killing of 59 schoolboys, the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014 and 101 girls in Dapchi in 2018.
Between 2013 and 2018, according to the UN, Boko Haram abducted more than 1,000 children, using them as soldiers and domestic or sex slaves. Amnesty International has estimated that 1,436 schoolchildren and 17 teachers were abducted between December 2020 and October 2021.
The Lafiya Sarari school was set up in response to the terror Boko Haram has inflicted. Established in 2017 by the Neem Foundation, a Nigerian charity set up to help communities affected by violence, the school is designed to provide support and education to those who have suffered trauma.
“What we do is a trauma-informed learning approach,” says Dr Fatima Akilu, a psychologist who helped set up the foundation. “It’s not a set programme.”
She says: “Some people have post-traumatic stress disorder, some come in with depression, some come with anxiety – it changes.
“We used to have a psychologist in the early days when we first started, but now all we have is a full-time counsellor who knows the girls, who has been with them throughout.”
Akilu initially envisioned Lafiya Sarari as a model of reconciliation, where children of victims, perpetrators and the security forces could receive education together.
But the conflict disrupted education, leaving gaps in learning for children too old for traditional primary school classes. “I didn’t even know ‘ABC’ when I came here,” says Usman, who enrolled aged 12.
The selection process involved interviewing girls aged between 11 and 14 from displaced communities and in refugee camps. “We selected girls who were tenacious and could become something because this was going to be quite a long project.
“Quite a few of the girls had come out of captivity at the time, so some of them were really in a bad state [and] needed trauma support. That was also one of the criteria because we could give them long-term treatment,” says Akilu.
Funding for the ongoing pilot programme for 100 girls came from a grant by the US Catena Foundation. Initially, the students learned together, but as they progressed they were streamed by academic achievement. Thirty pupils have successfully passed national exams and are preparing for university this year.
It is a far cry from how they arrived, fearful and distrustful. They struggled to interact or form friendships with other children and often resorted to violence at the slightest provocation. “They only knew how to fight,” says Yakubu Gwadeda, the deputy headteacher.
“They didn’t know how to interact with each other peacefully, how to queue,” he says.
Those who had been involved with Boko Haram, like Hassana, used to try to intimidate their peers with the threat of violence.
“They went through intervention sessions, coping, resilience, expressive therapy,” says the school counsellor, Hauwa Abdullahi Zaifada. “Some could not talk about their experience but we got to hear their stories through drawings and music.
“Sometimes,” she adds, “they would come to the sessions and not say a word, and we would have to reschedule.”
One of Zaifada’s primary goals was to overcome Boko Haram’s indoctrination against education. She found an opportunity when several girls spoke of their desire for revenge against those who had killed their parents or exploited them.
“I told them that you don’t have to be a soldier or hold a gun for revenge,” Zaifada says. “Education can be their revenge.
“They realised that education is valuable and can help them. That’s how they started picking up in school and doing well.”
Falmata Mohammed Talba, 20, found the daily therapy at school so beneficial that she began replicating the sessions with her two brothers, who attend a government-run school.
She helped them cope with the trauma they collectively experienced after witnessing their father’s murder by Boko Haram and then being held captive with their mother.
“When I first started, I used to see her one-on-one almost every day for about six months. Sometimes, I would even run out of the class. Talking to the psychologist helped me a lot,” Talba says.
“I helped my brothers the way Lafiya Sarari helped me. I tell my brothers, ‘This is what they told me. Why don’t you too start practising it?’ That’s how they changed.”
Talba says she and her brothers can now openly discuss their father without succumbing to tears or anger. “We now say, ‘Remember this when we were with Dad’, and we can laugh,” she says.
Hassana’s psychological progress has been notable, even though her academic advancement has been slower than that of some of her peers. She still relies on an interpreter to express herself in English.
“My relatives were so worried about my behaviour that whenever I started acting out, they would start shouting out passages of the Qur’an to calm me down,” she says. “But all that has stopped. The nightmares have also stopped.”
Seven years after the launch of Lafiya Sarari, Zaifada still has daily sessions with her students.
“Now I don’t have to look for them. They come to me if they have any issues,” she says. “Most of the issues now are environmental – peer-group influences, family issues.”
As for Usman, the crying has stopped. She smiles broadly as she shares her aspirations of winning a scholarship to study law at Cambridge University.
“I hear it is a good school,” she says.
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, The Guardian
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The police chief in the Federal Capital Territory said officers conducted their latest raid in Gidan Dambe. More than 300 people were arrested.
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Armed men killed four people, including two policemen, and kidnapped at least 40 others in an attack on Kaura Namoda, in Nigeria's northwest Zamfara state, police and residents said on Tuesday.
Africa's largest economy is grappling with a multifaceted security crisis, including kidnappings for ransom in the northwest, which has reached alarming proportions.
Zamfara police spokesperson Yazid Abubakar confirmed the attack and said reinforcements have been deployed to the Kasuwar Daji district of the town where the incident took place.
Residents, including some of the victims, told Reuters by phone about their ordeal which began with an attack on the local police station.
"Sporadic gunshots woke me up around 0100 GMT. They started with the uniformed men before they moved into our houses," Hussaini Mohammed said.
"They took more than 40 women and children, including some elderly men," added Mohammed, who managed to escape.
Hamisu Kasuwa Daji, who heads the town's transport union, told Reuters his son and two grandchildren were taken by the attackers.
"My house is adjacent to the police station. The bandits started attacking the police station, which they engaged for several minutes until they killed two policemen and two other civilians.
"Then they proceeded to my house, by which time I had already fled. After I returned home later, I realised they had taken my son and two grandsons," he said.
Gangs of heavily armed men referred to as bandits by locals have wreaked havoc across Nigeria's northwest in the past three years, kidnapping thousands of people, killing hundreds and making it unsafe to travel by road or to farm in some areas.
Widespread insecurity is exacerbating a cost-of-living crisis caused by the reforms of President Bola Tinubu who has not yet said how he plans to tackle the mounting problems.
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The Borno state police commissioner said the officers were on duty and attacked while defending the police quarters in Gajiram Town.
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At least six people were killed in a string of bomb blasts on Friday in Nigeria's second city Kano and the authorities imposed a curfew across the city, which has been plagued by an insurgency led by the Islamist sect Boko Haram.
Smoke billowed from the police headquarters for the north in Kano after one blast blew out its windows, collapsed its roof and triggered a blaze that firefighters struggled to control.
A Reuters reporter counted three bodies at the scene and three more at the local passport office, which was surrounded by flaming debris.
Some residents ran around shouting and screaming following the attacks. There were at least four other explosions across the city in quick succession.
"I was on the roadside and I just heard a 'Boom!'. As I came back, I saw the building of the police zonal headquarters crashing down and I ran for my life," said local man Andrew Samuel.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the apparently coordinated attacks, which prompted the government to announce a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Kano, like other northern cities in Nigeria, has been plagued by an insurgency led by Islamist sect Boko Haram, blamed for scores of bombings and shootings against mostly government targets that are growing in scale and sophistication.
Boko Haram became active around 2003 and is concentrated in the northern states of Yobe, Kano, Bauchi, Borno and Kaduna.
Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria means "Western education is sinful", is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.
The group considers all who do not follow its strict ideology as infidels, whether they be Christian or Muslim. It demands the adoption of sharia, Islamic law, in all of Nigeria.
FLAMES AND SMOKE
Witnesses said the bomber of the police headquarters, which covers most of northern Nigeria, pulled up at the building on a motorbike then got off and ran at it holding a bag.
"We tried to stop him but he ran in forcefully with his bag. All of a sudden there was a blast. You can see for yourself the building is damaged," said a policeman at the scene.
Police said a second blast had hit Kano's passport office and another hit Zaria Road police station in the city.
"The ground was shaking with the explosion. We saw flames and smoke at the police station," said witness Umaru Ibrahim.
A source at the State Security Service said another bomber had tried to attack there but was gunned down before he could detonate his bomb.
Police and military roadblocks were erected in the city within minutes.
"We are trying to reach the scenes of these heavy blasts. Many of the roads are blocked now by security agents," said Abubaker Jibril, head of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for Kano, told Reuters.
A bomb attack on a Catholic church just outside the capital Abuja on Christmas Day, claimed by Boko Haram, killed 37 people and wounded 57.
The main suspect in that attack escaped from police custody within 24 hours of his arrest, and police have offered a 50 million naira reward for information leading to his recapture.
Police arrested Kabiru Sokoto on Tuesday and while they were taking him from police headquarters to his house in Abaji, just outside Abuja, to conduct a search there, their vehicle came under fire.
Last August a suicide bomber blew up the U.N. Nigeria headquarters in Abuja, killing at least 24 people.
By Mike Oboh, Reuters
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The additional deployment follows attacks by gunmen who invaded communities in Plateau state on Christmas Eve, killing over 150 people. Analysts believe the government needs to employ more than just a heavy hand to bring peace to the area.
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Heavily armed assailants suspected to be Boko Haram insurgents randomly shot at people on Monday. Authorities launched investigations into the incident two weeks after bandits killed two people. Chibok is widely known for attacks and kidnappings, most notably the 2014 abduction of 276 teenage girls at a secondary school.
Attacks in Nigeria's central Plateau state left nearly 160 people dead after gunmen rounded several villages over the weekend. Authorities say the raids were senseless and unprovoked.
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The Nigerian government says at least 160 people were killed in attacks by armed groups on remote farming communities at the weekend. It's the worst violence in the central Plateau state in more than five years. No group has claimed responsibility but nomadic herders are believed to be responsible. Herders and farmers have been locked in a decades-long conflict over access to land and water. Why has the Nigerian government failed to prevent these attacks? And what does it mean for the country's wider security problem - as it faces challenges on multiple fronts?
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Communities in Plateau state, Nigeria are in mourning after at least 160 people were killed in a series of attacks by armed groups over the Christmas weekend. The gunmen targeted about 20 villages across the Bokkos and Barkin Ladi areas.
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Nigerian mother-of-three Grace Godwin was preparing food on Christmas Eve when her husband burst into the kitchen and ordered her and the children to run and take cover in the bush after gunmen were spotted in a nearby village.
Soon they heard gunfire, starting an hours-long attack by suspected nomadic herders who rampaged through 15 villages in central Plateau state on Sunday, killing at least 140 people with guns and machetes, officials, police and residents said.
It was the bloodiest violence since 2018 when more than 200 people were killed in Nigeria's central region where clashes between herders and farmers are common.
"We returned at 6 the next morning and found that houses had been burnt and people killed. There are still people missing," Godwin said by phone.
"There is no one in Mayanga (village), women and children have all fled."
It was not immediately clear what triggered Sunday's attacks but violence in the region, known as the "Middle Belt", is often characterised as ethno-religious - chiefly Muslim Fulani herdsmen clashing with mainly Christian farmers.
But experts and politicians say climate change and expanding agriculture are creating competition for land, pushing farmers and herders into conflict.
Nomadic cattle herders are from northern Nigeria, which is getting drier and becoming more prone to drought and floods. That is forcing them to trek further south, where farmers are increasing production as the population rapidly expands.
That means less land for nomads and their cattle, supporting the view among local people that the conflict is based on the availability of resources rather than ethnic or religious differences.
"These attacks have been recurring. They want to drive us out of our ancestral land but we will continue to resist these assaults," said Magit Macham, who had returned from the state capital Jos to celebrate Christmas with his family.
Macham was chatting to his brother outside his house when the sputtering sound of a petrol generator was interrupted by gunshots. His brother was hit by a bullet in the leg but Macham dragged him to into the bush where they hid for the night.
"We were taken unawares and those that could run ran into the bush. A good number of those that couldn't were caught and killed with machetes," he said.
Plateau governor called the violence "unprovoked" and police said several houses, cars and motorcycles were burnt.
President Bola Tinubu, who has yet to spell out how he intends to tackle widespread security, described the attacks as "primitive and cruel" and directed police to track down those responsible.
By Hamza Ibrahim and Camillus Eboh, Reuters
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At least 23 killed in Nigeria after herdsmen attack villagers
At least four Nigerian soldiers were killed while two South Koreans were abducted during an attack by gunmen in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern Rivers state, authorities said.
The gunmen ambushed a convoy escorting the Koreans on a work trip in the Ahoada East council area, resulting in a shootout, Maj. Jonah Danjuma, an army spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Troops are currently combing the general area to fish out the perpetrators of this dastardly act. Additionally, efforts are ongoing to ensure that the unaccounted oil workers are found,” Danjuma said.
Abductions for ransom are common in parts of Nigeria, but it has been especially widespread in Rivers and other parts of the oil-rich Niger Delta region where many foreign companies in the oil and engineering sectors operate. The region also struggles with high poverty and hunger despite its natural resources.
Hostages are usually released after the payment of large ransoms, though security forces in the past have succeeded in freeing some.
Danjuma urged locals to provide any intelligence that would help in making arrests.
By Chinedu Asadu, Reuters
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