Insecurity: Nearly 1,000 deaths recorded in Nigeria between January – March – Report

A Lagos based research platform, SBM Intelligence, has revealed that at least 979 deaths were recorded in Nigeria between January to March 2020.

On Tuesday, the organisation published a report titled ‘Media Reported Killing in Nigeria’, which showed killings from violent incidents, including attacks from Boko Haram, kidnapping, herdsmen, various militia, and communal clashes.

The project was in partnership with the civil society organisation, Enough is Enough.

”The methodology of this report is simple – incidents recorded are those that were reported in three different verified national newspapers,” Confidence Isaiah, a security analyst at SB Morgen Intelligence, told PREMIUM TIMES in a phone interview on Wednesday.

He said, ”The violence toll in various security trackers, the Council for Foreign Relations’s Nigeria Security Tracker, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), and our own locally generated reports, is worse,” Mr Isaiah said.

He added, “But we opted to use only those reported in the media for the purposes of this report, which means that there are many incidents that we ignored.”

The report, however, covers the numbers of fatalities across 30 states and the FCT, including the six geopolitical zones in the country. The report showed that a total of 113 security personnel with 77 soldiers, 26 Police officers, and 10 Naval officers were killed in three months.

The security report also recorded 249 deaths of terrorists and bandits.

Breakdown

According to the index, the northwest region got the highest number of recorded cases at 452 deaths between January and March; while the South-South, an oil-rich region that has faced issues of Niger-Delta Militants recorded the least recorded at 38 deaths.

The Northcentral region recorded 152 deaths, while the Southwest had 157 deaths.

For the other regions, the North-East, where millions have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency, the index showed a total number of recorded 162 deaths. While the Southeastern region recorded 118 deaths.

PREMIUM TIMES had also reported a London based research group, Conflict Armament Research (CAR) in January, that revealed arms used in the farmers/herders conflict in North-West Nigeria come from the same source as those used by the terror group, Al Qaeda, in Mali and other Sahel countries.

The Kaduna state recorded the highest number of deaths at 405, while Sokoto state, also from the northwest region recorded the least number of killings with one case only in three months.

Also in the report, Borno State recorded the second-highest number of deaths at 148; while Niger and Plateau states recorded 53 and 52 deaths respectively.

On Tuesday, the Taraba State Police Command confirmed that 25 persons were killed and several others injured in a bloody clash between Shomo and Jole ethnic groups in Lau Local Government Area of the state.

The President, Muhammadu Buhari, had since directed the Nigerian Army to join the police to flush out bandits from forests around the country, particularly in Plateau and Sokoto states.