News reaching our desk reveals that the Nigeria’s government on Wednesday denied claims that Boko Haram militants abducted 60 women and children from the country’s restive northeast, saying there was no evidence despite eyewitness testimony.
According to reports, government spokesman Mike Omeri told a news conference in Abuja that there was “nothing on the ground to prove any act of abduction, as reported”.
A local government official in the Damboa district of Borno, a vigilante leader and an area senator on Monday had said that all the women and girls, some as young as three-year-olds, were taken during a raid on Kummabza village in the last week.
Nigeria’s military initially did not confirm or deny the abduction and Borno governor Kashim Shettima on Monday ordered an urgent probe, highlighting a recent reported abduction of at least 20 nomadic women from the same area.
Shettima said he was cautious because of subsequent counter-claims that the women had in fact moved elsewhere in the state as part of migration patterns among ethnic Fulani cattle breeders.
Omeri claimed that Shettima had established “that there were no sufficient facts on the alleged abduction”, adding: “We hereby wish to state that based on available facts before us there was no abduction of 60 persons in Borno state.”
Residents from Kummabza and the surrounding villages attacked over three days from last Thursday, however, said they could not understand the denial.
“This is happening. I can’t understand why they would say that. It has been confirmed,” one man, who asked for his name to be withheld, reportedly told AFP.
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