A criminal gang released 48 children aged between seven and 12 kidnapped in central three weeks ago, after a ransom was paid, a local chief and a UN source told AFP Wednesday.
Gangs known locally as “bandits”, specialising in kidnapping and cattle rustling, target rural communities in northwest and central Nigeria, where they raid villages and loot homes. Some are known to levy “taxes” on mining sites and farmland.
“Forty children were released last night and the remaining eight were released today after we paid ransom,” Abdullahi Sahonrami, the traditional chief in Niger state’s Mashegu district, told AFP.
On August 5, bandits had rounded up 54 children harvesting groundnuts from a farm outside Sabon Rijiya village and held them for three days in their camp in nearby Zugurma game reserve but had released them without demanding payment, Saronhami said.
However, on their way back home the children were seized by another gang, loyal to Dogo Gide, a notorious bandit kingpin with ties to militants from the Ansaru jihadist group, the chief said.
Bandits, although motivated by money rather than ideology, have also at times forged ties with jihadists from the northeast, with whom they collaborate but also clash for territorial control.
A UN source confirmed the release of the 48 children.
“A girl died in the hands of the first gang and five escaped while being taken by the second gang, leaving 48 in captivity,” the source said.
Bandit and jihadist violence has escalated in Niger state as armed groups have set up camps in forests and game reserves in the mineral-rich, agrarian state.
Swathes of rural areas in Nigeria have little state presence, and security forces are overstretched.
Several bandit and jihadist groups maintain camps in the Zugurma game reserve in Kainji National Park, using its vast, ungoverned forests to hold ransom victims.
On Sunday, alleged jihadists released a video purporting to show hundreds of abductees seized from a mosque in the village of Dikera and surrounding communities in Niger state’s Borgu district.
The exact number of victims remains unclear.
On Tuesday, President Bola Ahmed Tunubu ordered Nigerian security agencies to rescue the abductees.
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