Day: September 2, 2021

ABUJA - Police in Nigeria’s northwest Zamfara state say they are trying to rescue 73 students kidnapped by gunmen Wednesday. Within the last week, three other groups of kidnapped students in the northwest were freed, but only after large ransoms were paid.

The latest abductees included 53 male and 20 female students, all teenagers at a government secondary school in the remote village of Kaya. Police said a large number of bandits invaded the school and seized the students.

Zamfara state police spokesperson Shehu Mohammed said in a written statement that police and the military are on the trail of the bandits and have reinforced security in the village.

Following the attack, Zamfara state officials ordered closure of all primary and secondary schools in the state. They also imposed travel restrictions as well as a daily dusk to dawn curfew to prevent further attacks.

Zamfara is not the only state taking security measures in northern Nigeria, where kidnapping is rife these days.

Authorities in Kaduna, Niger and Katsina states have also introduced movement restrictions and are limiting sales of jerrycans and gasoline in a bid to stop bandits who often move around on motorcycles.

Sani Shuaib, a VOA Hausa service reporter in Zamfara state, said the movement ban is already having an impact.

"It involves all vehicles except military and security personnel. Immediately Zamfara announced it, Kaduna followed, Niger and then Sokoto too, I understand they're planning to adopt similar measures and it has started biting hard,” said Shuaib.

But security expert Kabir Adamu said lack of accountability is the reason attacks on schools have lingered.

"The security departments don't have monitoring and evaluation systems in place and so there's no form of oversight or pressure on them to meet set targets. Even where there is clear failing, no one is held accountable," said Adamu.

Several people, their faces hidden by scarves, show off rifles and rounds of ammunition.

Members of a "bandit" gang pose with weapons at their forest hideout in northwestern Zamfara state, Nigeria, Feb. 22, 2021. (Sani Malumfashi/VOA)

Armed gangs have kidnapped about 1,100 students from schools in northern Nigeria since December of last year.

The increase in crimes in the region is believed to be crippling economic activities and contributing to the poor standard of living there.

Last Friday, gunmen released 90 pupils from an Islamic seminary in Niger state where children as young as four were abducted and held for nearly three months.

Source: Voice of America

Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency said Thursday that the terrorist group al-Shabab had killed a female employee who was abducted in Mogadishu in June. But close family members questioned the claim.

Ikran Tahlil Farah, 24, worked with the agency’s cybersecurity department. She was abducted June 26 near her home in Mogadishu’s Abdulaziz district, which is close to NISA headquarters.

The agency posted a brief statement on its website Thursday saying its investigation had determined that the young woman’s kidnappers handed her over to al-Shabab militants, who later killed her.

The agency did not release details about when or where it believed Ikran was killed.

Al-Shabab has not publicly acknowledged any role in Ikran’s disappearance. The Islamist extremist group previously has publicly executed people it accused of spying for the Somali government and for Western countries, including the United States.

The security agency issued its statement several hours after VOA’s Somali Service aired a radio program that focused on Ikran’s disappearance. Colonel Abdullahi Ali Maow, a former Somali intelligence official who was a guest on the program, speculated that the Islamist terrorist group was involved in Ikran’s fate.

'This is a smokescreen'

But the young woman’s mother, Abdullahi Ali Maow, said she thought her daughter might be alive and detained in a clandestine location.

“I do not believe that al-Shabab killed my daughter, because when she was kidnapped, she was with people she trusted in the agency,” said the mother, who was also a guest on the program. “I think she is being held somewhere, and this is a smokescreen.”

Former NISA Director-General Abdullahi Ali Sanbalolshe told VOA Somali in July that “some people” told him Ikran had records about a program that secretly sent Somali military recruits to Eritrea to train. Allegations surfaced in June that those recruits have been fighting and dying in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict.

Ikran “also could possess other sensitive information for which she could have been targeted,” Sanbalolshe said, noting that he hired the young woman in 2017.

Opposition leaders have been pressuring Somalia’s spy agency and Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble for information about the disappearance of the intelligence agency employee.

Source: Voice of America

BLANTYRE - A United Nations global report on nutrition says malnutrition is to blame for more than a third of Malawian children who have stunted growth and nearly a quarter of child deaths. To combat the problem, the U.N. and Malawi's President Lazarus Chakwera launched a campaign Thursday to promote child nutrition and health.

The theme for the Scaling Up Nutrition 3.0 Campaign is “Unite to end all forms of malnutrition for sustainable human well-being and economic development.”

Launching the campaign, Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera says Malawi’s high malnutrition rate is largely because most of its citizens are overly dependent on Nsima as the only food.

Nsima is a hard porridge cooked from maize flour and often is eaten with fish, meat and vegetables.

“The painful truth is that those among us, who say, ‘we haven’t really eaten until we have eaten Msima,’ need to rethink our beliefs about nutrition and take seriously the science of how too much Nsima consumption affects our bodies,” he said.

Chakwera said the campaign has provided an opportunity for Malawi to re-engineer its society toward a more diversified diet.

“As a special challenge, I am calling on all of you to replace 10% of your Nsima consumption every year with other and more nutritious food. That kind of discipline and commitment will take all of us to make malnutrition history in our country,” he said.

Dr. Alexander Kalimbira is the associate professor in nutrition at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

He said besides the effect on a person’s health, the malnutrition also has resulted in low productivity in Malawi.

“Do we have evidence? And the answer is yes, we do have evidence," he said. "Back in 2012, a study done in Africa; Cost of Hunger in Africa, what shows in the report is that the country, in one year alone. in 2012 lost $597 million U.S. dollars. Your Excellency, this represented at that time 10.3% of our gross domestic product. These are the consequences of malnutrition.”

Chakwera said his government, however, is making efforts to address the problem.

He said this includes the allocation of budgets of local councils, placing malnutrition officers across the country, and providing specialized malnutrition services to all Malawians.

Gerda Verburg is the United Nations assistant secretary-general and also coordinator for the Scaling Up Nutrition 3.0 Movement.

She hailed Malawi for steps it is taking to end malnutrition.

Verburg asked Chakwera, who also is the chairperson of the Southern Africa Community Development, or SADC, to take the campaign beyond Malawi.

“Please bring these inspirational messages and this strategy also to all SADC countries because Malawi is really a frontrunner in the strong commitment and understanding that nutrition is the engine for change and for development,” she said.

Recent government statistics show about 1.5 million Malawians, about 8 percent of the population are currently food insecure.

Source: Voice of America