The Nigerian government is planning to clear the country’s forest reserves of terrorists, bandits and kidnapping gangs, Minister of Environment, Balarabe Abbas, said on Thursday. Abbas did not explain why Nigerian authorities failed to interdict the thousands of armed mercenaries in Plateau State that killed nearly 300 unarmed villages during the Christmas week.
For years, Nigeria’s military has been overwhelmed by armed insurgencies in multiple States and as many as 30,000 bandits in its Northwestern States.
The armed gangs have been notorious for mass kidnappings of students from schools, and raiding villages in rural areas to loot and kidnap scores of residents to hold them for ransom in forest hideouts.
Abbas said the ugly trend bothers President Bola Tinubu, who has been struggling to end the nation’s security crises since coming into office in May 2023.
“We are liaising with the military, Department of State Services (DSS), police and other security agencies in this direction to remedy the ugly trend,” the Abuja official said. In Nigeria, the DSS is the functional equivalent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
—Ezinwanne Onwuka reports for TruthNigeria from Abuja.
