Armed bandits in northwest Nigeria abducted dozens of villagers whom they invited to a meeting about potential peace \u200bnegotiations, authorities and residents said on Monday, highlighting \u200cthe region’s worsening security.<\/p>\n
Police said 39 people were seized on Sunday when they went to a meeting in the forest near Magamin Diddi \u200bvillage in the Maradun municipality of northwest Zamfara \u200bState. Some local residents and officials said the number \u2060could be as high as 50.<\/p>\n
According to a Zamfara \u200bState Police Command statement, the victims were meeting relatives of \u200ba bandit leader in an attempt to broker peace and ease restrictions on movement imposed on the community.<\/p>\n
Zamfara is at the centre of \u200ba long-running security crisis in which armed groups, locally \u200breferred to as bandits, carry out mass kidnappings, killings and village raids. \u200cThe \u2060violence has disrupted farming and displaced thousands.<\/p>\n
Security forces have deployed personnel and intelligence assets to locate the victims, the police statement added.<\/p>\n
Several individuals were reported by locals to have been released to \u200bconvey the \u200bkidnappers’ ransom demands back to \u2060the village.<\/p>\n
Bashar Aliyu, a resident of Magamin Diddi, said the armed group was demanding 125 \u200bmillion naira ($91,880) for the release of those \u200babducted.<\/p>\n
In many \u2060communities, residents have resorted to negotiating directly with armed groups to gain access to farmland or secure the release of \u2060abductees, \u200ba practice authorities have discouraged but \u200bstruggled to prevent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Armed bandits in northwest Nigeria abducted dozens of villagers whom they invited to a meeting about potential peace \u200bnegotiations, authorities and residents said on Monday, highlighting \u200cthe region’s worsening security. Police said 39 people were seized on Sunday when they went to a meeting in the forest near Magamin Diddi \u200bvillage in the Maradun municipality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,1129,27],"tags":[175,1485],"class_list":["post-21081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-nigeria","tag-zamfara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21082,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21081\/revisions\/21082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}