Lagos, Mar. 18, (dpa/GNA) – At least 14 people were abducted during an attack on a village in the north-western Kaduna State of Nigeria, an official said Sunday.
Usman Danlami, a member of parliament from the administrative district of Kajuru, told dpa that the victims were abducted on Saturday morning.
The attack comes four days after gunmen abducted 61 people in a nearby community.
The two incidents are the latest in a series of mass abductions that have taken place in northern Nigeria this month.
On March 7, gunmen seized 278 children from two schools in Kaduna State and two days later 15 students were kidnapped from an Islamic school in Sokoto State.
In an earlier incident, more than 200 internally displaced people, mainly women and children, were abducted by the Jihadist group Boko Haram.
Although President Bola Tinubu has ordered Nigeria’s security agencies to rescue those who have been abducted, none of them have been released so far. Those behind the abductions have also not been apprehended, but local media has reported that the government is trying to negotiate with the kidnappers.
In the north and centre of Africa’s most populous country with more than 220 million inhabitants, both terrorist groups and criminal gangs kidnap people time and again. The aim is usually to extort ransom money, forced recruitment or sexual violence.
Almost exactly ten years ago, in April 2014, the abduction of 276 schoolgirls by the Islamist militia Boko Haram in Chibok in the north-eastern state of Borno caused worldwide horror.