Gunmen have abducted a minimum of 87 individuals, including women and children, in Kaduna State in a Monday, March 18, 2024 attack.
According to reports from residents, the attack comes as a new assault following an armed gang’s abduction of 286 students and staff from a school earlier in March.
Recounting the incident, residents said armed men dressed in army uniform 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 later released by the gunmen because he struggled to walk due to poor health. He said that he was receiving treatment at a local government clinic.
Gunmen are known to force-march their victims deep into the bush, keeping them for up to months while awaiting ransom payments.
“We were outside our homes chatting around 10:30 p.m. and suddenly bandits appeared, beating and shooting,” said Haruna Atiku. His wife and two daughters were among those missing.
The village is about 10 km (6 miles) from Buda community, where gunmen seized 61 people on March 12th.
Kidnappings at schools in Nigeria were first carried out by jihadist 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 abductions are devastating families and communities, compelling them to gather their resources to meet ransom demands.
This often leads to the distressing sale of cherished assets such as land, livestock, and crops in order to secure the release of their abducted loved ones..
