Abuja:

At least 118 inmates escaped from prison after heavy rains on Wednesday night damaged the facility in Suleja near the Nigerian capital, a prison service spokesperson said.

The downpour, which last several hours, wrecked parts of the medium-security prison, including the perimeter wall and surrounding buildings, spokesperson Adamu Duza said in a statement on Thursday.

Service agents were hunting the fugitives and had so far recaptured 10 of them with the help of other security agencies.

“We are in hot chase to recapture the rest,” Duza said.

He assured the public the authorities were on top of the situation.

“The public is further enjoined to look out for the fleeing inmates and report any suspicious movement to the nearest security agency,” he said.

Duza gave no details on the identities or affiliation of the escaped prisoners but in the past members of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgent group have been locked up in Suleja prison.

Prison breaks have become a major security concern in Nigeria where overcrowding, underfunding, and lax security measures have created conditions ripe for escape.

Thousands of inmates have escaped in recent years due to weak infrastructure and militant attacks, notably a July 2022 Islamic State attack on a high-security prison in the capital Abuja where around 440 inmates were freed.

“The Service is not unmindful of the fact that many of its facilities were built during the colonial era, and that they are old and weak,” Duza said.

He added that the service is making “frantic efforts” to modernize its prisons, including the construction of six 3,000-capacity facilities and the revamping of existing ones.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Parents wait for news about the kidnapped LEA Primary and Secondary School Kuriga students in Kuriga, Kaduna, Nigeria on March 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Nearly 300 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren were released on March 24, local officials said on March 24, more than two weeks after the children were seized from their school in the northwestern State of Kaduna.

Kaduna State Gov. Uba Sani did not give details of the release of the 287 students, who abducted from their school in the remote town of Kuriga on March 7. In a statement, he thanked Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “particularly ensuring that the abducted Kuriga school children are released unharmed”.

Mr. Tinubu had vowed to rescue the children “without paying a dime” as ransom.

Abductions of students from schools in northern Nigeria are common and have been a major source of concern since 2014, when Islamic extremists kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls in Borno state’s Chibok village.

In recent years, abductions have been concentrated in the country’s northwestern and central regions, where dozens of armed groups often target villagers and travellers for ransom.

The raid on the village in Kaduna States in Nigeria came weeks after around 280 students were abducted from a school in the State.
| Photo Credit: AP

Waking up to a gunman shining a light around his house, Nigerian Yusuf Thomas took his chance to escape when his would-be kidnapper told him to lie still and walked away to make a call.

He was lucky. More than 80 residents from his village in northwest Nigeria’s Kaduna State were snatched after gunmen marched them out of their homes on Sunday evening in the country’s most recent mass abduction for ransom.

The raid on the village in Kajuru district came just weeks after around 280 pupils were abducted from a school by a criminal gang in the same State, prompting a national outcry about Nigeria’s insecurity.

Mr. Thomas thought he would be shot until he managed to escape. “I heard a voice telling me not to raise my head or I’d be shot, so I laid down,” he said.

“When he turned back and was making a call to his colleagues, I used the opportunity to escape.”

Kaduna is one of the northwestern Nigerian States where heavily armed criminal gangs target villages and communities to raid, loot and carry out mass abductions for ransom.

State officials have not given any figures for the kidnapping, but local officials say 87 people, mostly women and children, were taken.

Rashidat Hamza is in despair. All but one of her six children are among the nearly 300 students abducted from their school in Nigeria’s northwest, riddled with Islamic extremists and armed gangs.

It has been more than two days after her children — ages 7 to 18 — went to school in the remote town of Kuriga in Kaduna state only to be kidnapped by gunmen. She was still in shock on March 9.

Authorities said at least 100 children aged 12 or younger were among the abductees in the state known for violent killings lawlessness and dangerous roads where people get regularly snatched.

Also read: At least 200 people, mostly women and children, abducted by extremists in northeastern Nigeria

“We don’t know what to do, but we believe in God,” Ms. Hamza told The Associated Press during a visit to the town.

Mass kidnappings in Nigeria

The mass kidnapping in Kuriga was the third in northern Nigeria since last week; a group of gunmen abducted 15 children from a school in another northwestern state, Sokoto, before dawn on March 9, and a few days earlier 200 people, mostly women and children displaced by conflict, were kidnapped in northeastern Borno State.

The kidnappings are a stark reminder of the security crisis plaguing Africa’s most populous country.

No group claimed responsibility for any of the recent abductions. However, Islamic extremists waging an insurgency in the northeast are suspected of carrying out the kidnapping in Borno. Locals blame the school abductions on herders who are in conflict with the settled communities.

It’s not the first time for a student kidnapping in Nigeria to shock the world. In 2014, Islamic extremists abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from Borno’s Chibok, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign.

Also read: Boko Haram abduction of Chibok girls: A photo essay

A decade later, at least 1,400 Nigerian students have so far been abducted from their schools in similar circumstances. Some are still held captive, including nearly 100 of the Chibok girls.

Recalling Thursday’s kidnapping, Nura Ahmad, a teacher, told the AP that students were just settling into their classrooms at the government primary and secondary school when gunmen “came in dozens, riding on bikes and shooting sporadically.”

The LEA Primary and Secondary School, one of the few educational facilities in this area, sits by the road just at the entrance of the town, tucked in the middle of forests and savannah. Even with its decaying roof and wrecked walls, it gave parents hope for a better future for their children.

“They surrounded the school and blocked all passages … and roads” to prevent help from coming before kidnapping the children in less than five minutes, Ahmad said.

Fourteen-year-old Abdullahi Usman braved gunshots to escape the captors. “Those who refused to move fast were either forced on the motorcycles or threatened by gunshots fired into the air,” he said. “The bandits were shouting: Go! Go! Go!” he said.

Nigerian police and soldiers headed into the forests on Friday to search for the missing children, but combing the wooded expanses of northwestern Nigeria could take weeks, observers said.

“Since this happened, my brain has been muddled,” said Shehu Lawal, the father of a 13-year-old boy who is among those abducted. “My child didn’t even eat breakfast before leaving. His mother fainted (upon hearing the news),” he said.

Some villagers like Lawan Yaro, whose five grandchildren are among the abducted, say their hopes are already fading.

People are used to the region’s insecurity, “but it has never been in this manner,” he said. “We are crying, looking for help from the government and God, but it is the gunmen that will decide to bring the children back,” he said. “God will help us.”

But schools are not the only targets. More than 3,500 people have been abducted across Nigeria in the last year, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Some were even kidnapped from their homes in the capital of Abuja.

Fighting armed gangs

Last year, President Bola Tinubu took office after he successfully campaigned on the promise to tighten security and stop the kidnappings.

Experts say it is easy to smuggle in arms, used in kidnappings, over Nigeria’s poorly policed borders. More than half of its 1,500 km border with Niger, for instance, stretches across the northwest. Though mostly covered in woodland savannah, the region also has vast ungoverned and unoccupied forests where organised gangs hide and keep their kidnap victims.

In 2022, lawmakers passed a bill to penalize ransom payments, but Nigerian kidnappers are known for their brutality, forcing many families to succumb to their demands.

Nigeria’s military continues to conduct air raids and special military operations in the region as well as respond to pockets of crisis across the country but is fatigued by the 14-year Islamist insurgency in the northeast. Armed gangs also keep on multiplying in the region where many are poor and often work with extremists, seeking to expand their operations.

The military previously said that sometimes kidnap victims were used as “human shields” to prevent aerial bombardments of the forests where their captors hide.

The gangs are “adapting their strategies and further entrenching themselves in the northwest through extortion,” said James Barnett, a researcher specialising in West Africa at the U.S.-based Hudson Institute.

“Their mentality is that they should be allowed free rein to do what they please in the northwest and that if the state challenges them, directly or indirectly, they will have to respond and show their strength,” Mr. Barnett said.

More than a dozen checkpoints and military trucks now dot the dangerous 89 km road running from Kuriga town to the city of Kaduna. But the soldiers are likely to be redeployed elsewhere soon, depending on security needs.

People in Kuriga can only hope their children are returned unharmed and the safety they now feel with the presence of military personnel endures.

Hamza, the mother whose five children were kidnapped, hopes the government will arrest the kidnappers and return the students. “The gunmen don’t allow us to have peace.”

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is grappling with violence by armed groups in the northwest, known locally as “bandits”, and jihadist insurgents in the northeast.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Armed men accused of belonging to a separatist group killed six people, including four police officers, in southeastern Nigeria’s Ebonyi state, police said on March 9.

The attack occurred early on Friday near a police checkpoint on a road near the city of Abakaliki, said state police spokesman Joshua Ukandu.

A shootout began in which four officers died and two civilians were killed in the crossfire, he added.

The attackers were still on the run;

They are alleged to be members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, which advocates a separate state for the Igbo ethnic group.

Attacks in the southeast are often blamed on IPOB, which systematically denies any involvement in the violence.

Separatism is a sensitive topic in Nigeria, where a three-year civil war broke out in 1967 after Igbo army officers declared an independent Biafra state.

More than a million people died.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is also grappling with violence by armed groups in the northwest, known locally as “bandits”, and jihadist insurgents in the northeast.

Seventy-six people were arrested for attending a birthday party for gay people in northern Nigeria, the country’s paramilitary agency said on October 23, adding that the organiser had also planned to hold a same-sex wedding, which is illegal.

These are the latest arrests targeting LGBTQ Nigerians after police in August raided a gay wedding in the southern city of Warri in Delta state, and arrested dozens of people. The accused are out on bail.

In Nigeria, like in most parts of Africa, homosexuality is generally viewed as unacceptable, and a 2014 anti-gay law took effect despite international condemnation.

Buhari Saad, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) spokesperson for the largely Muslim Gombe state, said after receiving a tip-off, the agency raided a party on Saturday night that was being attended by “homosexuals and pimps”.

He said 59 men had been arrested, including 21 who confessed to being homosexual, and 17 women.

The Gombe NSCDC said in a statement that the organiser of the birthday party had also planned to wed another man, who was still at large, before police raided the event.

The anti-gay law in Africa’s most populous nation includes a prison term of up to 14 years for those convicted, and bans gay marriage, same-sex relationships, and membership of gay rights groups.

The case was expected to be heard in the Gombe state High Court on Tuesday, Mr. Saad said.

New Delhi:

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu is all set to visit Delhi to attend the G20 summit, scheduled to take place on September 9 and 10.

According to an official statement released by Special Adviser to the President Chief Ajuri Ngelale, Tinubu will participate in and deliver keynote addresses at both the Nigeria-India Presidential Roundtable and the Nigeria-India Business Conference on the sidelines of the G20 Summit.

The President aims to leverage this platform to attract global capital and promote increased foreign direct investments in key labour-intensive sectors of Nigeria’s economy for job creation and revenue expansion.

Moreover, he will use this opportunity to highlight Nigeria’s attractiveness as an investment destination, specifically outlining his cross-sectoral reform plan as encapsulated by the Renewed Hope Agenda, according to the statement.

The President will also hold bilateral meetings with a cross-section of world leaders from four different continents, representing both G-20 and non–G20 countries. These engagements are geared towards strengthening bilateral economic, trade, and investment partnerships for mutual benefit, as per the statement.

At the G20 Summit, the Nigerian leader is expected to share Nigeria’s perspective on the theme, “One Earth-One Family-One Future,” which speaks to the global unity required to address the challenges facing humanity and the planet.

With its collective contribution of up to 80 per cent of global GDP, 75 per cent of international trade, and housing 60 per cent of the world’s population, the G-20 constitutes a significant economic power bloc of socio-economic opportunity and geo-political stability.

While Nigeria’s membership of the G-20 is desirable, the government has embarked on wide-ranging consultations with a view to ascertaining the benefits and risks of membership.

The Group of Twenty (G20) comprises 19 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, United Kingdom and United States) and the European Union.

India assumed the G20 Presidency on December 1 last year with the theme — ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu plans to attend the G20 summit in India to try to promote foreign investment in Africa’s largest economy and mobilize global capital to develop infrastructure, his spokesman said on Friday.

Mr. Tinubu has embarked on the country’s boldest reforms in decades, which have been welcomed by investors. However, reforms have brought additional hardship to Nigerians already dealing with a cost of living crisis.

The country’s main unions plan to go on strike next week and an stage an indefinite shutdown later this month.

“The focus of the summit will be heavily predicated on the urgent need to attract foreign direct investment … and to ensure that we are able to mobilize private capital from around the world toward the development of Nigeria’s public infrastructure,” Mr. Tinubu’s spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale said in a statement.

The summit will hold on Sept 9 and 10.

Nigeria wants to encourage investments rather than rely on borrowing to create jobs, its Finance Minister said on Monday, as the new government tries to revive the West African nation.

Mr. Tinubu inherited a struggling economy with record debt, shortages of foreign exchange and fuel, a weak naira currency, inflation at a near two-decade high, skeletal power supplies and falling oil production due to crude theft and underinvestment.

Mr. Ngelale said Mr. Tinubu will meet leaders from Brazil, India, South Korea and Germany on the sidelines of the G20.

Mr. Tinubu also plans to meet Indian executives, including Jindal Steel and Power Company, among others, Mr. Ngelale said.

Airtel Africa, owned by India’s Bharti Airtel, is Nigeria’s third-biggest listed firm.

Mr. Tinubu has called for more U.S. investment in his country after accepting an invitation by U.S. President Joe Biden to meet later this month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.