Over 25,000 persons are missing in Nigeria as a result of the ongoing insurgency in the North-East region of the country, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Yann Bonzon, the head of the delegation of the ICRC, noted that this is in addition to the over 2,000 cases of missing persons the organisation registered after January 2021.
He disclosed this at an event in Abuja, the nation’s capital to mark the 2022 International Day of the Disappeared.
Bonzon, who added that children are more vulnerable, said more than half of the missing persons registered in North-East were minors at the time of their disappearance.
Disaggregating the figures further, Bonzon says more than 14,000 of the victims of disappearance are children representing over fifty per cent of the total number.
He said women are the second highest number of victims of disappearance.
He also asserted that the figure presented is only a fraction of the situation as many cases of missing persons in Nigeria are undocumented.
He blamed the lack of data and political will as major challenges to proper documentation of disappeared persons in Nigeria.
The Boko Haram war which started in Borno State has been ongoing for about 13 years and it has spread to adjoining states like Yobe, and Adamawa, amongst others. Schoolchildren and women have been kidnapped by the insurgents.
The Chibok and Dapchi schoolchildren abductions attracted international outcries yet there is no end in sight to the attacks by the marauders.
