Last week, gunmen in Nigeria kidnapped 287 primary school students aged between eight and 15 years old. It’s the latest in a series of raids targeting school children which has seen around 1,500 students kidnapped in the country's troubled northern region since 2014.
Why are there so many kidnappings in Nigeria right now?
With the country facing rising food costs and a struggling economy, the abductions are aimed at obtaining ransom. Kidnappings have become a lucrative business for bandit groups and these incidents are increasing. The BBC reports that the day before the children were taken from school, women and children from a displaced persons camp in another part of the country were rounded up and seized by armed men on motorbikes while out searching for firewood.
Over recent years, more than 600,000 people have been displaced from their homes in northwest Nigeria as a result of extreme violence, deteriorating economic conditions, and climate change. The Lake Chad basin is shrinking and the Sahara desert is spreading southward, adding to a shortage of farming land and access to water for humans, livestock and crops. Hunger, malnutrition and recurrent outbreaks of preventable diseases have reached critical levels.
