The deaths were recorded out of nearly 200 suspected measles cases in the state of Adamawa, official says.
At least 42 people have died from a measles outbreak in a little more than a week in Nigeria’s northeastern state of Adamawa, the state’s health commissioner says.
Felix Tangwami said on Friday that the measles outbreak had mostly affected two local government areas where nearly 200 suspected cases were identified.
“Measles vaccines have been released to those areas and our field teams are containing the situation,” he said at a media briefing.
Measles is a highly contagious, airborne virus that mostly affects children under the age of five. It can be prevented by two doses of vaccine. Its early symptoms include high fever, cough and runny nose. It also often causes rashes and bumps all over the body of the patient.
More than 50 million measles deaths have been averted through vaccinations since 2000, according to the World Health Organization.
Widespread insecurity in many northern Nigerian states is often blamed for disruptions in vaccination campaigns, leaving children particularly vulnerable.
Since the armed group Boko Haram started launching attacks in Nigeria in 2009, more than two million people have been displaced from their homes, spawning one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crises. Criminal gangs have further deepened security woes in northwestern Nigeria.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also disrupted the health system and vaccination programmes in parts of the country, according to Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.
MSF said earlier this year that the inability of public health actors in Nigeria “to achieve the 95 percent vaccination rate required to suppress measles” led to an alarming rise in the number of people affected by the virus last year.
MSF said it treated 3,965 patients between October and December.
“This is notably due to the difficulties for health workers in accessing rural communities surrounding Maiduguri,” Jombo Tochukwu-Okoli, MSF medical activity manager at the Gwange Pediatric Hospital in the capital of the northeastern state of Borno, said in a statement in February.
The virus can spread quickly among unvaccinated children. “One infected child can spread the virus to between nine and 12 other unvaccinated children,” Tochukwu-Okoli said.
A manhunt is under way after a downpour destroyed the perimeter fence of the medium-security prison in the town of Suleja.
More than 100 inmates have escaped from a prison in Nigeria near the capital city of Abuja after overnight heavy rains destroyed parts of the facility, prison officials have said.
The downpour, which lasted for several hours on Wednesday night, destroyed the perimeter fence of the medium-security prison in the town of Suleja, in Niger state, “giving way to the escape of a total of 118 inmates from the facility”, according to prisons spokesman Adamu Duza.
The prison service and other agencies managed to recapture 10 of the escaped inmates. “We are in hot chase to recapture the rest,” Duza said.
“The public is further enjoined to look out for the fleeing inmates and report any suspicious movement to the nearest security agency,” he added.
Duza gave no details on the identities or affiliation of the escaped prisoners, but in the past members of the Boko Haram armed group have been locked up in Suleja prison.
There are fears that they could find their way into the vast forests that connect Suleja town and neighbouring states, some of which are known hideouts for criminal gangs.
In addition to being overcrowded with 70 percent of the inmates still awaiting trial, most prisons in Nigeria are old, having been built during the colonial era before the West African nation’s independence from Britain in 1960.
The structures are rarely renovated, which has made it easier for inmates to escape during past jailbreaks. Thousands of inmates have thus escaped from prisons, including in Abuja, where nearly 900 inmates broke free in 2022.
Duza said the prison service was making “frantic efforts” to modernise its prisons, including the construction of six 3,000-capacity facilities and the revamping of existing ones.
Thousands of inmates have escaped in recent years due to weak infrastructure and militant attacks, notably a July 2022 ISIS (ISIL) attack on a high-security prison in the capital Abuja where around 440 inmates were freed.
The 29-year-old chess player and child education advocate played in part to raise money for underprivileged children.
A Nigerian chess champion has broken the world record for the longest chess marathon after playing unbeaten for more than 58 hours in New York City’s Times Square to raise money for underprivileged children.
Tunde Onakoya, 29, embarked on his marathon session on Wednesday, hoping to raise $1 million for children’s education across Africa through the record attempt.
He had set out to play the royal game for 58 hours but continued until he reached 60 hours at about 12:40am (04:40GMT) on Saturday, surpassing the current chess marathon record of 56 hours, 9 minutes and 37 seconds, achieved in 2018 by Norwegians Hallvard Haug Flatebo and Sjur Ferkingstad.
“I can’t process a lot of the emotions I feel right now. I don’t have the right words for them. But I know we did something truly remarkable,” he told the AFP news agency.
“[At] 3am last night, that was the moment I was ready to just give it all up… but Nigerians travelled from all over the world. And they were with me overnight,” he continued.
“We were singing together and they were dancing together and I couldn’t just give up on them.”
The Guinness World Records organisation has yet to publicly comment about Onakoya’s attempt. It sometimes takes weeks for the organisation to confirm any new record.
Onakoya played chess for 60 hours, from Wednesday, April 17 to Saturday, April 20, 2024 [Yuki Iwamura/AP]
‘The audacity to make good change happen’
Onakoya played against Shawn Martinez, an American chess champion, in line with Guinness World Records guidelines that any attempt to break the record must be made by two players who would play continuously for the entire duration.
For every hour of game played, Onakoya and his opponent got only five minutes’ break.
The breaks were sometimes grouped together, and Onakoya used them to catch up with the enthusiastic crowd of Nigerians and New Yorkers cheering him on.
Onakoya is well known in Nigeria, where he launched the Chess in Slums project in 2018 in Ikorodu, on the outskirts of Lagos.
The organisation offers often-marginalised young people, many of whom are not in school and work to help their families, a space to learn to play chess.
More than 10 million school-age children are not in school in the West African country – one of the highest numbers per country in the world.
A total of $22,000 was raised within the first 20 hours of the attempt, said Taiwo Adeyemi, Onakoya’s manager. “The support has been overwhelming from Nigerians in the US, global leaders, celebrities and hundreds of passersby,” he said.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu congratulated Onakoya in a statement for “setting a new world chess record and sounding the gong of Nigeria’s resilience, self-belief, and ingenuity”.
Onakoya, he added, had “shown a streak customary among Nigeria’s youth population, the audacity to make good change happen … even from corners of disadvantage.”
The officers treated journalist Saint Mienpamo Onitsha as if he was violent and dangerous. Guns drawn, they arrested him at the home of a friend, drove him to the local police station in Nigeria’s southern Bayelsa State, and then flew him to the national capital, Abuja.
A week later, they charged Onitsha under the country’s 2015 Cybercrimes Act and detained him over his reporting about tensions in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. This was in October 2023. He was released on bail in early February and is due to appear before a court on June 4.
The Cybercrimes Act is tragically familiar to Nigeria’s media community. Since its enactment, at least 25 journalists have faced prosecution under the law, including four arrested earlier this year. Anande Terungwa, a lawyer for Onitsha, described the law to me as a tool misused to “hunt journalists”.
For years, media and human rights groups had been calling for the act to be amended to prevent its misuse as a tool for censorship and intimidation. Then, in November last year, Nigeria’s Senate proposed amendments and held a public hearing to help shape changes. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), alongside other civil society and press groups, submitted recommended reforms.
On February 28, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu signed amendments to the act, including revisions to a section criminalising expression online, according to a copy of the law shared with me by Yahaya Danzaria, the clerk of Nigeria’s House of Representatives. The changes, which have yet to be published in the government gazette, have buoyed hopes for improved press freedom, but the law continues to leave journalists at risk of arrest and surveillance.
“It’s better, but it’s definitely not where we want it to be,” Khadijah El-Usman, senior programs officer with the Nigeria-based digital rights group Paradigm Initiative, told me in a phone interview about the amended law. “There are still provisions that can be taken advantage of, especially by those in power.”
One of the primary concerns has been Section 24 of the law, which defines the crime of “cyberstalking”. It is this section that authorities repeatedly used to charge journalists, and it is one of the sections that was amended.
Under the previous version of the law, Section 24 criminalised the use of a computer to send messages deemed “grossly offensive, pornographic or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”, and punished such offences with up to three years in prison and a fine. The same punishment applied for sending knowingly false messages “for the purpose of causing annoyance” or “needless anxiety”. In practice, this meant journalists risked jail time based on highly subjective interpretations of online reporting.
The amended version maintains the heavy penalty, but refines the offence as computer messages that are pornographic or knowingly false, “for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order, posing a threat to life, or causing such messages to be sent”. While the narrower language is welcome, the possibility for abuse remains.
“It could have been more specific in wording,” Solomon Okedara, a Lagos-based digital rights lawyer, told me after reviewing the amended section. He said it was an improvement because the burden of proof to bring charges is higher, but still leaves room for authorities to make arrests on claims that certain reporting has caused a “breakdown of law and order”.
It remains to be seen exactly how these changes will affect the cases of journalists and others previously charged under now-amended sections. “It is now for the lawyers to use,” Danzaria explained. “You cannot use an old law to prosecute somebody…if [the case] is ongoing, the new law supersedes whatever was in place.”
For Onitsha’s case, Terungwa said he would seek to incorporate the amendments into his defence in court. CPJ continues to call for authorities to drop all criminal prosecutions of journalists in connection with their work.
Another issue with the law – even after the recent amendments – is how it may permit surveillance abuses. Section 38 of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act fails to explicitly require law enforcement to obtain a court-issued warrant before accessing “traffic data” and “subscriber information” from service providers. This oversight gap is particularly concerning given how Nigeria’s police have used journalists’ call data to track and arrest them.
“I’m looking towards a future cybercrimes act that respects human rights,” El-Usman emphasised, noting the need for laws that guard against abuses, not just in Nigeria, but across the region. From Mali to Benin to Zimbabwe, authorities have used cybercrime laws and digital codes to arrest reporters for their work. Journalists’ privacy is also broadly under threat.
Nigeria’s lawmakers have proven they can act to improve freedom of the press and expression in their country, but journalists remain at risk. Those same lawmakers have the opportunity to make further reforms that would protect the press locally and send a rights-respecting message beyond their borders. Will they seize it?
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
UN agencies say double-digit inflation and stagnating local production are major drivers of the hunger crisis.
Nearly 55 million people will struggle to feed themselves in the coming months in West and Central Africa as soaring prices have fuelled a food crisis, United Nations agencies have warned.
In a joint statement on Friday, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN children’s agency UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that the number facing hunger during the June-August lean season had quadrupled over the last five years.
It said economic challenges such as double-digit inflation and stagnating local production had become major drivers of the crisis, beyond recurrent conflicts in the region.
And it noted that Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Mali would be among the worst affected.
The UN agencies said the prices of major staple grains had continued to rise across the region from 10 percent to more than 100 percent compared with the five-year average.
The situation was particularly worrying in northern Mali, where some 2,600 people are likely to experience catastrophic hunger, it added.
“The time to act is now. We need all partners to step up … to prevent the situation from getting out of control,” said Margot Vandervelden, WFP’s acting regional director for West Africa.
“We need to invest more in resilience-building and longer-term solutions for the future of West Africa,” she added.
Malnourished children
Food shortages have also resulted in “alarmingly high” levels of malnutrition, with children badly affected.
The agencies said eight out of 10 children aged between six and 23 months do not consume the minimum amount of food required for optimal growth and development.
It also said some 16.7 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished and more than two out of three households are unable to afford healthy diets.
“For children in the region to reach their full potential, we need to ensure that each girl and boy receives good nutrition and care, lives in a healthy and safe environment, and is given the right learning opportunities,” said UNICEF Regional Director Gilles Fagninou.
“To make a lasting difference in children’s lives, we need to consider the situation of the child as a whole and strengthen education, health, water and sanitation, food, and social protection systems,” he added.
The region’s heavy dependence on food imports has tightened the squeeze, particularly for countries battling high inflation such as Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.
Policies should be introduced to boost and diversify local food production “to respond to the unprecedented food and nutrition insecurity”, said Robert Guei, the FAO’s Sub-regional Coordinator for West Africa.
Lagos, Nigeria – In the decade since the armed group Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 students at an all-girls school in the town of Chibok, abductions have become a recurrent fixture in Nigeria, especially in the restive northern regions.
Just last month, on March 7, a criminal gang kidnapped 287 pupils at the government secondary school in Kuriga, a town in Kaduna state. Two days later, another armed group broke into the dorm of a boarding school in Gidan Bakuso, Sokoto state, kidnapping 17 students.
The Sokoto victims and more than 130 of the victims from Kaduna have since been released, but there is no word yet about the remaining abductees.
Meanwhile, out of the hundreds taken in Chibok in April 2014, more than 90 are still missing, according to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF.
“I cannot believe that it is 10 years and we have not really done anything about [stopping] it,” said Aisha Yesufu, the co-convener of the #BringBackOurGirls movement pressing for the release of the kidnapped Chibok students.
Nigeria is plagued by insecurity. In the northeast, Boko Haram has waged a violent insurgency since 2009; in the north-central region clashes between farmers and herders have escalated in recent years; and acts of banditry by gunmen in the northwest are terrorising citizens.
Across the country, the targeting of vulnerable populations has been widespread, including kidnappings for ransom or to pressure the government to meet the aggressors’ demands. Experts also say that worsening economic conditions have led to an increase in abductions for ransom over the last four years.
But as Africa’s largest economy and a country with one of the strongest military forces on the continent, many have questioned why Nigeria has been unable to nip the spiralling insecurity crisis in the bud.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that there is no political will,” Yesufu said.
Bring back our girls campaigners chant slogans during a protest calling on the government to rescue the remaining kidnapped Chibok girls who were abducted in 2014 [File: Sunday Alamba/AP]
A booming industry
Last year, charity Save The Children reported that more than 1,680 students have been abducted in Nigeria since 2014. This has significantly contributed to deteriorating absentee statistics, with one in three Nigerian children not in school according to UNICEF.
But students are not the only ones bearing the burden of the crisis as travellers, businesspeople, priests, and those perceived as being well-off are also often targets. Kidnappings have become a sub-economy of sorts, as abductors rake in millions of naira in ransom payments. Social media is also littered with public requests from people soliciting funds to buy the freedom of their abducted relatives and friends.
Since 2019, there have been 735 mass abductions in Nigeria, according to socio-political risk consultancy firm, SBM Intelligence. It said between July 2022 and June 2023, 3,620 people were abducted in 582 kidnapping cases with about 5 billion naira ($3,878,390) paid in ransoms.
This year alone SBM Intelligence said there have already been 68 mass abductions.
The abductions are not confined to the north, where banditry and armed religious groups are prevalent, but have also been seen in the south and the southeast. Even Abuja, Nigeria’s capital territory, has not been spared, and in Emure Ekiti in the relatively peaceful southwest region, five students, three teachers and a driver were kidnapped on January 29.
The roots of hostage-taking in Nigeria can be traced back to the 1990s in the Niger Delta, where the country gets most of its oil; at the time, armed groups started abducting foreign oil executives as a way to pressure the government to address their concerns about oil pollution in their communities.
But in recent times, hostage-taking has become a booming industry, said Olajumoke (Jumo) Ayandele, Nigeria’s senior adviser at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). Perpetrators now mostly target socially classified vulnerable groups such as children and women, she said, to elicit public anger and press their demands for ransom payments or the release of their arrested gang members.
When a ransom is demanded, the payment is expected to be made by the victims’ relatives, or in some cases the government – and delays or non-payment can sometimes be deadly. One of five sisters kidnapped in Abuja in January was brutally killed after a ransom deadline passed, sparking a national outcry.
“The groups that have used this strategy are able to gain local and international attention to really show their strength and amplify what they want to state authorities,” Ayandele told Al Jazeera.
Although the Nigerian government has said it does not negotiate with terrorists in dealing with the spiralling security crisis, experts say this may not be true.
“We have heard and we have seen some state governments negotiating with some of these groups and some of these bandits,” said Ayandele. In many cases, this has only emboldened the criminals.
A member of the security forces holds a weapon as people wait for the arrival of rescued schoolgirls who were kidnapped in Jangebe, Zamfara [File: Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters]
Why can’t Nigeria stop the abduction of pupils?
Experts say that complex, multilayered issues are at the heart of the worsening insecurity crisis. These include socioeconomic factors, corruption and a lack of cohesiveness in the security structure – where there is no rapid response to attacks and ineffective collaboration between the police and the military.
Over the last decade, Nigeria’s economic situation has all but nosedived as the country grapples with high inflation, rising youth unemployment, and the loss of currency valuation. The fortunes of citizens have hardly improved, and 63 percent of people are in multidimensional poverty. Experts say this has pushed many into criminality.
“The economic hardship during this period has only increased and different policies drive different dimensions. As a result, this has led to kidnapping being seen as a viable and profitable endeavour,” said Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, a research analyst at the Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development.
The security architecture in Nigeria is also centralised, with authority concentrated in the hands of the federal government and no real state or regional policing independent of that. Experts say this has hindered the ease with which security agents can operate. It has also led to calls for state policing, especially amid criticisms that security agencies do not collaborate effectively.
At an army level, soldiers have complained about low remuneration and substandard weapons. The Nigerian military has been dogged with accusations of corruption, sabotage, connivance and brutality in the past, and this has fractured relationships with communities and potential sources of intelligence.
“This inability is not down to the military alone – there is a cross-government failing in security response,” Adekaiyaoja told Al Jazeera.
“There needs to be a stronger synergy in communal buy-in in securing facilities and also escalating necessary intelligence … There should be a renewed focus on necessary and frankly overdue police reform and a stronger synergy between intelligence and security agencies.”
Nigeria’s insecurity plagues all six of the country’s geopolitical zones, with each facing one or more of the following: armed fighters, farmer-herder clashes, bandits or unknown gunmen, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) separatists, oil bunkering and piracy. This has kept the armed forces busy.
“Our security forces are spread thin. We have six geopolitical zones in Nigeria and there is something that is always happening,” said ACLED’s Ayandele.
Nigerian students and staff who were kidnapped in March arrive in Kaduna after they were freed [File: Abdullahi Alhassan/Reuters]
What is the toll of the crisis?
Abduction victims who have been released have reported harrowing conditions while in captivity. They are often threatened with death and barely fed as they endure unhygienic, unsavoury living conditions, including sleeping out in the open and trekking long distances into forests where they are kept.
The girls especially are vulnerable to rape and even forced marriages. Adults’ testimonies claim they are routinely beaten and tortured until the captors’ demands have been met.
Experts say the experiences leave victims with serious psychological wounds and trauma.
The fear of their children being abducted has led many parents in hot zones in the northeast and northwest to pull their children out of school entirely to avoid the risk. This is despite the government’s introduction of free and compulsory basic education in schools.
According to UNICEF, 66 percent of all out-of-school children in Nigeria are from the northeast and northwest, which also represent the poorest regions in the country.
“No parent should be put in a situation where they have to make a choice between the lives of their children and getting their children educated,” said #BringBackOurGirls movement’s Yesufu, adding that education is under attack in Nigeria.
As a result, she said illiteracy is then weaponised by the political class, who use people’s lack of information and knowledge to manipulate voters during elections.
But for some girls, the consequences may be even more dire than just losing an education, Yesufu said, as some parents decide to marry their daughters off early to avoid them getting kidnapped or worse. More than half of the girls in Nigeria are currently not attending school at a basic level, and 48 percent of that figure are from the northeast and northwest.
Education is crucial to national growth and development. But Nigeria’s continuing abduction crisis is posing serious challenges to schooling in the worst-affected regions of the northeast and northwest – and experts worry it may have broader implications for the country in the near future.
“This is just a ticking time bomb because when you don’t have a populace that is educated, they can be easily radicalised or recruited into these non-state armed groups,” Ayandele said.
“We don’t know what can happen in the next 20 years if we don’t address this education problem as soon as possible.”
The Binance executive was detained when he arrived in Nigeria following the crackdown on the company.
An executive of cryptocurrency exchange Binance has escaped custody in Nigeria, where a criminal investigation has been launched against the platform accused of being used for money laundering, according to authorities.
Nadeem Anjarwalla, the regional manager for Binance in Africa, “fled Nigeria using a smuggled passport”, the office of Nigeria’s National Security Adviser said in a statement on Monday.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest crypto economy in terms of trade volume, with many citizens using crypto as the country experiences surging inflation and a declining local currency.
“The personnel responsible for the custody of the suspect have been arrested, and a thorough investigation is ongoing to unravel the circumstances that led to his escape from lawful detention,” Zakari Mijinyawa, spokesman for the office of Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, said in a statement.
The Abuja-based Premium Times newspaper, which broke the news of Anjarwalla’s escape, reported that he fled from a guest house in the capital city after guards allowed him entry to a nearby mosque for prayers.
The Binance executive, who holds both British and Kenyan citizenship, was detained along with another colleague on February 26 when they arrived in Nigeria following the crackdown on the company.
Tigran Gambaryan, Anjwaralla’s colleague who is a US citizen, remains in custody.
The Binance executives were due to appear in court on April 4.
Binance ended trading with the Nigerian naira currency on its platform in early March after authorities accused it of being used for money laundering and “terrorism” financing.
Authorities have not provided evidence for the accusations publicly.
Nigeria’s tax agency, meanwhile, filed a four-count charge on tax evasion against the crypto exchange, accusing it also of “complicity in aiding customers to evade taxes through its platform”.
Children who were kidnapped in two separate abductions in northern Nigeria have been freed. On Friday the army rescued one group taken from Sokoto, while more than 130 students from Kaduna were released early on Sunday.
The kidnapping in Kaduna state on March 7 was one of the biggest such attacks in years and prompted a national outcry over security.
More than 130 students abducted by gunmen from a school in Nigeria earlier this month have been released “unharmed” days before a ransom deadline, say officials.
Government spokesman Abdulaziz Abdulaziz told Al Jazeera on Sunday it “took a lot of backchannel engagement” to release the students abducted on March 7 in Kuriga, a dusty town in Kaduna state – the first mass kidnapping in Nigeria since 2021.
“[All] of them were released and all of them were fine,” he said, giving the official number of freed students at 137 – much lower than the figure of 286 students and one staff member in most media reports. He claimed the media reports were wrong but did not give further details.
Earlier on Sunday, Uba Sani, governor of the northwestern state of Kaduna, said in a statement the hostages were freed after “security operations” coordinated by the country’s national security adviser.
“We … thank all Nigerians who prayed fervently for the safe return of the school children. This is indeed a day of joy,” the governor said.
In the name of Allah the Beneficient, the Most Merciful, I wish to announce that our Kuriga school children have been released.
Our special appreciation goes to our dear President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR for prioritizing the safety and security of Nigerians and particularly… pic.twitter.com/yGauTZt9BN
“The Nigerian Army also deserves special commendation for showing that with courage, determination and commitment, criminal elements can be degraded and security restored in our communities,” Sani added in a statement.
Abductions of students from schools in Nigeria by rampaging armed groups with no ideological affiliation are common. On March 9, 15 students were kidnapped from a school in the village of Gidan Bakuso in Sokoto state while at least 87 people, including women, were taken captives in Kajuru area of Kaduna on March 18.
In recent years, the abductions have been concentrated in the country’s northwestern and central regions, where dozens of armed groups often target villagers and travellers for ransom, forcing families and communities to sell land, cattle and grain to secure their loved ones’ release – or in some cases, crowdfunding on social media sites.
The Kaduna gunmen last week demanded a total of 1 billion naira ($680,000) for the release of the children and staff and vowed to kill the victims if the payments were not made within 20 days. But Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said he would “not pay a dime” after the practice was outlawed in 2022 in a bid to clamp down on the attackers. Ransom payers face a 15-year sentence.
Abductions at Nigerian schools were first carried out by armed group Boko Haram, which seized 276 students from a girls’ school in Chibok in northeastern Borno state in 2014. Some of the girls have never been released, most of them forcefully married to the fighters.
In another mass kidnapping in July 2021, gunmen took more than 150 students in a raid. The students were reunited months later with their families after they paid ransoms.
A total of some 1,400 children have been abducted since 2014.
The soldiers were on a mission to stop the conflict between two communities in the Bomadi region.
Sixteen Nigerian soldiers have been killed on a mission to halt clashes between two communities in the southern state of Delta, an army spokesperson said.
The troops from the 181 Amphibious Battalion deployed in the Bomadi region, had responded to the conflict in the Okuoma community when they were killed on Thursday, Brigadier General Tukur Gusau said in a statement on Saturday.
“The reinforcement team led by the commanding officer was also attacked, leading to the death of the commanding officer, two majors, one captain and 12 soldiers,” he said.
The chief of defence has also directed an immediate investigation and the arrest of those involved, according to Gusau.
“So far, a few arrests have been made while steps [are] in place to unravel the motive behind the attack,” he added.
There are frequent clashes, sometimes deadly, over land or compensation for oil spills by energy companies in many Delta state communities.
Moreover, conflict has also continued to roil Nigeria’s northern and central regions, where armed groups are active and government forces have been accused of committing abuses.
Earlier this year, at least 30 people were killed in renewed violence in Nigeria’s central Plateau State, where clashes between Muslim herders and Christian farming communities have erupted for years.
The state lies in the Middle Belt, a region seen as the dividing line between Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south. Inter-communal violence has been common in the region, which is home to dozens of ethnic minorities, such as the Mwaghavul.
Clashes in the region and the northwest are rooted in community tensions over land between nomadic herders and Indigenous farmers, but exacerbated by the effects of climate change and population rise in the region.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
