Highlights: Mass kidnappings in Nigeria: President Tinubu mobilizes military reinforcements. More than a hundred displaced women and girls are missing in the Borno region where Boko Haram and Iswap jihadists are active. Thursday March 7, nearly 300 students from a school in the Kaduna region were also kidnapped by armed men and taken into the forest. This is the first time that a kidnapping of this magnitude has taken place since the election of Bola tinubu and that of the new governor of Kaduna State.

In Nigeria, more than a hundred displaced women and girls are missing in the Borno region where Boko Haram and Iswap jihadists are active. Thursday March 7, nearly 300 students…

Mass kidnappings in Nigeria: President Tinubu mobilizes military reinforcements

In Nigeria, more than a hundred displaced women and girls are missing in the Borno region where Boko Haram and Iswap jihadists are active.

Thursday March 7, nearly 300 students from a school in the Kaduna region were also kidnapped by armed men and taken into the forest.

President Tinubu has called for the mobilization of security forces, but rescue operations of this type are complex.

Nigerian soldiers deployed in Kaduna State on March 8, 2024. AP - Sunday Alamba

By: RFI Follow

With our correspondent in Lagos,

Liza Fabbian

These are two mass kidnappings that took place in less than a week.

Negotiate, bomb or pay... These are the different options generally available to the authorities to try to free the hostages held by the bandits.

This is the first time that a kidnapping of this magnitude has taken place since the election of Bola Tinubu and that of the new governor of Kaduna State, Uba Sani, who took office last May.

On Friday March 8, the president mobilized military reinforcements to find the 280 missing schoolchildren, while the local governor, for his part, reportedly launched negotiations.

According to information from the Nigerian press, he called on an experienced negotiator, well known to armed groups in the region.

Renewed security crisis?

This position of the local governor is a priori less bellicose than that of his predecessor who launched, during his mandate, a vast campaign of aerial bombings, despite the protests of the victims' families who feared that hostages would lose their lives during these operations. .

This new mass kidnapping shows, in any case, that the various strategies put in place by the Nigerian authorities since 2020 have not succeeded in putting an end to the activities of the bandits.

This could even be a sign of a resurgence of the security crisis in north-west Nigeria, fueled in particular by the trafficking of arms and ammunition across the border with neighboring Niger.

In Kaduna, the authorities have used different strategies to try to curb the explosion of kidnappings, without much success.

Read alsoNigeria: nearly 280 students kidnapped in the North-West, in the midst of a wave of mass kidnappings

Mass kidnappings in Nigeria: President Tinubu mobilizes military reinforcements

Mass kidnappings in Nigeria: President Tinubu mobilizes military reinforcements

Renewed security crisis?

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