An international human rights organisation under the aegis of Centre for Democracy and Development disclosed that at least 60,000 persons have been killed in 18 Northern states of Nigeria, while 1863 persons have died in the South-East in the last ten years due to insecurity.
The CDD’s report was titled: “Multiple Nodes, Common Cause: National Stocktake of Contemporary Insecurity and State Responses in Nigeria”.
According to a statement issued on Tuesday night by the Director of the CDD, Idayat Hassan, said the report, which also measured conflict-related casualties in the North-Central states of the Federal Capital Territory, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger and Plateau, revealed that “around 11,000 people were killed in the period under review.”
The report stated that about 35, 000 persons were killed in North-East states of Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe.
The report said the growing insecurity and violence in the country were also fuelled by shifting livelihoods, circulation of small arms and light weapons, corruption and inadequate access to justice, geographic and regional dynamics as well as ideological grievances.
The CDD report said the increasing prevalence of misinformation and disinformation across traditional and new media spheres may have deepened public anxiety and intergroup tensions about the mounting insecurity in the country and state responses to it.
In the South-Eastern region, the report revealed an approximate number of people killed as follows: 50 persons were killed in 2011; 92 in 2012; 68 in 2013; 22 in 2014; 50 in 2015; 225 in 2016; 325 people in 2017; 160 people in 2018. In 2019 the figure stood at 114; 110 in 2020 and; settled at 647 in 2021, which is 1,863.
To address the prevailing situation, the CDD said local and national stakeholders would need to be willing to try new approaches to curtailing insecurity, stressing that the kinetic approaches favoured by the federal government may remain a mirage.
“Peacebuilding interventions are urgently needed in most, if not all, geopolitical zones to improve community cohesion in conflict-affected areas,” the report posited.
