Kidnappings in Nigeria: Dozens of people were kidnapped while waiting for a train in Edo state

At least 32 peo­ple have been kid­napped from a train sta­tion in Edo state, south­ern Nigeria.

Those who were kid­napped were sta­tion staff and pas­sen­gers wait­ing for the train.

Secu­ri­ty forces, with the help of local hunters, began a search and res­cue oper­a­tion for the victims.

Con­cerns about domes­tic attacks are grow­ing. The lat­est inci­dent occurred a month before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, in which secu­ri­ty is one of the major elec­tion issues.

On Sat­ur­day, dozens of men armed with AK-47s opened fire upon enter­ing Igben sta­tion, report­ed­ly seiz­ing com­muters and staff and tak­ing them to a near­by forest.

Wit­ness­es said some of those who escaped were shot. A woman with her baby also fled, reach­ing a near­by com­mu­ni­ty and report­ed­ly being rescued.

A local res­i­dent quot­ed by Van­guard said the kid­nap­pers released the two chil­dren because they “thought they would slow them down.”

A spokesman for the Edo gov­ern­ment, Chris Osa Nehikare, said many peo­ple took the train because local roads had been turned into “no-go zones to col­lect huge ran­soms from the fam­i­lies of (kid­napped) vic­tims.” said it came to be.

In recent years, Nige­ria has seen an increase in kid­nap­pings for ran­som, as well as inci­dents of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed armed groups attack­ing local communities.

In Decem­ber, the main rail­way link­ing the cap­i­tal Abu­ja with the north­ern city of Kaduna reopened nine months after a shoot­ing on the rail­way line killed at least nine pas­sen­gers. Many oth­ers were tak­en hostage, the last one being released in October.

Anx­i­ety is one of the key issues in the elec­tion cam­paign ahead of Feb­ru­ary’s gen­er­al elec­tion in Nige­ria to deter­mine the suc­ces­sor to Pres­i­dent Muham­mad Buhari.