Nigerian police launch search for 21 abducted farm workers

Police in Nigeria say they're trying to find 21 individuals kidnapped by gunmen whereas engaged on farmland whose proprietor is believed to have owed the alleged kidnappers coerced funds.

A soldier sits on one of many vehicles used to convey again ladies kidnapped from a boarding college in Zamfara, Nigeria on March 2, 2021 [Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters]

Police in Nigeria are trying to find 21 individuals kidnapped by gunmen whereas engaged on farmland whose proprietor is believed to have owed the alleged kidnappers coerced funds.

Katsina state police spokesperson Gambo Isah stated on Thursday that the individuals kidnapped had been youngsters engaged on a farm within the distant Faskari council space of the state when the gunmen “singled out the farm and kidnapped them”.

“In accordance with our investigation, the bandits positioned some levies on a few of these farmers, and this explicit one refused to adjust to their calls for,” Isah stated. “That was why they went to their farm and kidnapped the employees,” Isah stated.

Police and Nigerian troopers from a close-by army outpost had been working to seek out the kidnapped farm employees, who're ages 15-18, he stated.

Residents in distant elements of the northwest and central areas of Nigeria focused by armed teams have complained of gunmen requiring farmers to pay big levies to work their farmland.

Katsina, the house state of President Muhammadu Buhari, has been one of many scorching spots within the abduction scourge.

The teams initially consisted of younger males from the Fulani ethnic group, whose members historically labored as nomadic cattle herders and are caught up in a decades-long battle with Hausa farming communities over entry to water and grazing land.

However specialists say a number of armed teams at the moment are making the most of the state of affairs to practise banditry in these areas, too.

Nigerian safety forces perform aerial bombardments of the identified hideouts of the armed teams. Authorities blame their continued operation on the cooperation of some native residents.

Most of these residents are farmers who say they danger getting attacked if they don't pay the levies imposed on their villages.

The police are “nervous and disturbed that terrorists are inserting levies on individuals”, police spokesperson Isah stated. He stated villagers should nonetheless “desist from cooperating and from no matter calls for made by these terrorists”.