Over 24,000 Nigerians are currently missing, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Africa has said.
A statement released by the ICRC said 24,000 individuals in Nigeria have been registered as missing persons.
Signed by Patrick Youssef, ICRC’s regional director for Africa said this number includes
over half being children at the time of their disappearance.
While stating that volunteers of the ICRC in northern states like Borno, Adamawa and Yobe have continued to work to ensure that families who have lost loved ones due to conflict are reunited, Youssef called for attention to the need to help prevent and respond to the issue of missing persons
He said this in commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared, observed on August 30.
This day raises awareness of the plight of the missing, honours their memories and the emotional distress of families and ways to prevent and respond to such incidents.
Continuing, Youssef said that across Africa, 71,000 individuals were registered as missing as of June 2024, marking a significant 75% increase from the previous recorded number in 2019.
The majority of these cases are due to prolonged armed conflicts, devastating natural disasters, and treacherous migration journeys.
He said, “In Nigeria, the ICRC registered around 24,000 people as missing, which likely only represents a fraction of the total number.
“More than half of these cases involved children at the time they disappeared,” he said.
