Africans Rising Calls For Help For Released Kidnap Victims

Africans Rising has urged the Nigerian government to provide critical medical and psychosocial support to nearly 300 girls who have been released from kidnappers’ custody in order for them to cope with the trauma they must have experienced.

Africans Rising is a global Pan-African solidarity movement with over 42,000 individual members and 800 organisational members from over 150 countries around the world.

The organisation in a statement on Wednesday, said “it notes the release of nearly 300 girls who were abducted earlier this month. We call on the Nigerian government to offer critical medical and psychosocial support to enable the girls to deal with the trauma they must have gone through.

“The kidnapping that took place on Thursday 7th March is one of the largest school mass abductions since 2021. An armed gang kidnapped another 15 boarding school students in northwestern Sokoto the next day, in the early hours of Saturday, March 9. This happened days after over 200 internally displaced persons (IDPs), mostly women and girls, were kidnapped in Ngala in northeastern Borno State. Since 2018, this town has suffered a series of terror attacks and mass abductions.

“We strongly condemn the recent surge in kidnappings and other acts of terror in Nigeria and call on the Federal Government of Nigeria and all the security agencies to hasten the search and safely rescue all the abductees.”

Africans Rising insisted that abductions constitute just one of the security concerns in Nigeria, noting that 16 soldiers were murdered on 14th March in Ughelli South in Delta State, adding that the army on their part went on rampage and razed the whole community. This extrajudicial action of the army must be condemned in no uncertain terms.

It said: “All perpetrators must be pursued, arrested and dealt with according to the law.