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Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has directed security forces to track down the armed group behind coordinated assaults on four villages in Niger state, after footage purporting to show captives from last week's raids circulated on social media.
The attacks struck the communities of Dekara, Gidan Zana, Sabon Gida and Masaka on Friday, with residents describing simultaneous strikes on multiple mosques during evening prayers. Witnesses said the assailants wore military-style attire. A police spokesperson, Wasiu Abiodun, said more than 40 people were believed dead, though the toll has yet to be independently verified.
A local youth leader told reporters that as many as 500 people could have been seized, a figure authorities have not confirmed. The captors later uploaded a video appearing to show some of the abducted villagers seated in a forest setting, although no ransom demand has so far been made public.
The footage offered grim comfort to some families. The youth leader, who declined to give his name, said he identified numerous neighbours in the clip, including an elderly man from Gidan Zana regarded as a community patriarch. For relatives who spotted loved ones, he noted, the video at least provided proof they were alive — a small solace compared with the uncertainty facing families of those still unaccounted for.
Officials say the gunmen laid improvised explosives along the routes they used to march captives into the forest. One teenage boy was killed when one of the devices detonated as he attempted to flee. Wounded survivors are being treated in hospital, and many residents have abandoned the area entirely, fleeing to nearby states or across the border into Benin.
In a statement released through his spokesman Bayo Onanuga, the president denounced what he called a cowardly assault on innocent citizens, describing the perpetrators as enemies of peace and humanity who would not escape justice. He also extended condolences to bereaved families.
The violence marks an escalation in insecurity across the Borgu area, which sits along the borders of Kebbi and Kwara states and neighbouring Benin. Police earlier this month rescued 145 people kidnapped from four separate villages in the same region.
Security officials have also voiced alarm over the expanding footprint of jihadist factions in north-western Nigeria, reporting that fighters have recently moved into border communities and begun enforcing religious edicts on local populations. Authorities had initially attributed Friday's raids to bandit gangs, criminal networks that have long profited from mass abduction and ransom extortion across the region.
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