The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said an estimated 17,000 Nigerians went missing, mostly after attacks in insurgency-troubled parts of the Northeast and other conflict zones, and are still unaccounted for.
The update came on Wednesday, ahead of this year’s observance of the International Day of the Disappeared, an annual event on August 30.
The most recent figure is a decline of some 6,000 from the previous year, when the ICRC said that 23,659 missing persons were being searched for by their families.
The latest figure was given during an event in Yola by Emeline Montel, the Protection of Family Links Delegate at the ICRC Mubi office, who said about 3,000 of the missing persons were from Adamawa State.
The figures were based on cases recorded by the ICRC, which helps families trace missing relatives and reestablish contact where possible, Montel explained.
She was speaking to journalists during a public sanitation exercise, street cleaning, remembrance and awareness campaign organized by relatives of missing persons and supported by the ICRC as part of activities leading up to the August 30 International Day of the Disappeared.
Relatives of missing people who took part in the exercise said the community clean-up was also meant to draw attention to the plight of thousands of families whose lives have been torn apart by the disappearance of loved ones.
Many of the missing were breadwinners and young people trying to build their lives, they said.
Habiba Mustapha, a member of the Association of Families of Disappeared Persons, who took part in the street cleaning in Yola, said the fate of four of her relatives was still unknown.
Habiba, a Gwoza indigene displaced from Borno State to Adamawa, said the disappearance of her relatives had subjected her family to prolonged emotional and economic hardship.
“The loss of my relatives is an ongoing source of emotional stress and economic hardship. Some of the missing were breadwinners. Our children are out of school. “Look at me here in a whole new environment,” she said.
