This week, officials said that Nigerian security forces rescued the remaining two captives from a high-profile train station kidnapping and detained seven persons, including two village heads.
Earlier this month, in the most recent mass abduction in Nigeria, gunmen assaulted a rural train station in the southern Edo State and abducted hundreds of people.
The kidnapping at the train station underscored the growth of insecurity in Nigeria, which will be a major concern for voters in the election to replace President Muhammadu Buhari next month.
Chris Nehikhare, the communication commissioner for the state of Edo, announced in a statement on Wednesday that the final two hostages had been rescued and seven persons had been arrested.
Two of them were traditional local chiefs.
Originally, it was claimed that 32 hostages had been taken, however this number was eventually reduced to 20. Earlier last month, multiple individuals were rescued.
Kidnapping for ransom is a big problem in Nigeria.
In the northwest states, where heavily armed bandit militias operate, violence is most widespread, but it has spread to other regions.
In one of the country’s most high-profile incidents, gunmen with explosives ripped up the tracks and attacked a train traveling from the capital Abuja to the city of Kaduna in the country’s northwestern region in March of last year.
Eight individuals were murdered, while scores more were abducted and kept for months. The train service did not resume until December 2022, following the release of all hostages.
Buhari, a former military commander and dictator, had pledged to make Nigeria safer. After serving two terms in office, he resigns.
Additionally, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian child in Bethlehem.
The jihadists waging a 13-year war in the country’s northeast have been forced out of the towns and territory they once controlled.
Criminal gangs target schools, neighborhoods, and highways in kidnapping and looting raids in the northwest, where they continue to wage war against the armed forces.
Typically, hundreds of people are kidnapped at once and taken to covert camps in the vast forests of the northern states, where their kidnappers negotiate ransom payments.
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